Dr. Gorica Petrovich is a distinguished scholar at the forefront of behavioral neuroscience research with a particular focus on the neural mechanisms underlying feeding behavior and motivation. She currently serves as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston College with a joint appointment in the Neuroscience program, where she has established herself as a leading authority in the field. After earning her PhD, Dr. Petrovich developed an innovative research program that bridges cognitive neuroscience and behavioral psychology to investigate how the brain processes food-related cues and regulates eating behavior. Her academic journey has been marked by significant contributions to our understanding of the prefrontal cortical circuits involved in learning and motivated behaviors, establishing her laboratory as a center of excellence for integrative neuroscience research.
Dr. Petrovich's groundbreaking research has fundamentally transformed our understanding of how contextual and learned cues influence food intake and motivated behaviors, with her work on neural circuits of feeding behavior garnering over 8,400 citations according to Google Scholar. Her seminal 2007 publication on how learned contextual cues potentiate eating in rats provided crucial evidence for the role of prefrontal cortical structures in regulating food consumption even in sated animals, challenging previous assumptions about homeostatic versus hedonic feeding controls. Subsequent investigations into the effects of novelty on food consumption across genders, published in 2020, have further elucidated the complex interactions between environmental factors and neurobiological mechanisms that govern eating behavior. This body of work has established Dr. Petrovich as a pioneer in identifying the specific neural pathways through which contextual learning modulates feeding behavior, with significant implications for understanding obesity and eating disorders.
Beyond her research contributions, Dr. Petrovich has played a vital role in advancing the field through her mentorship of numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have gone on to establish their own successful research careers. She maintains an active laboratory at Boston College where she continues to explore the intersection of learning, memory, and motivated behaviors, with recent work focusing on sex differences in neural responses to food cues and the impact of environmental novelty on consumption patterns. Her research program, consistently supported by NIH funding as evidenced by grants such as R01 DK085721, demonstrates a sustained commitment to uncovering the fundamental neural mechanisms that govern behavior. As a respected scholar whose work continues to shape contemporary understanding of the neuroscience of feeding, Dr. Petrovich remains at the forefront of developing new paradigms for investigating how the brain controls motivated behaviors in both health and disease states.
