Veronika Kondev, PhD
2025 Leon Levy Scholar in Neuroscience
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Sub-disciplinary Category
Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience
Previous Positions
- BS, University of Chicago
- PhD, Vanderbilt University (Dr. Sachin Patel, Dr. Brad Grueter)
Bio
Dr. Veronika Kondev obtained her BS from the University of Chicago in Biological Sciences, following which she received a Fulbright Fellowship to study the therapeutic potential of hallucinogens in Krakow, Poland. She earned her PhD from Vanderbilt University under the mentorship of Dr’s. Sachin Patel and Brad Grueter; her thesis focused on understanding how stress promotes affective pathology, and the role of the endogenous cannabinoid (endocannabinoid) system in mediating this transition. As a Leon Levy Research Fellow at Icahn School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Eric Nestler, she will investigate how dopaminoceptive cells in the ventral hippocampus promote reward processing, learning, and motivated behavior.
Research Summary
Neurobiological mechanisms underlying substance use disorder, with a focus on relapse behavior.
Technical Overview
Dopamine signaling facilitates outcome valence, reward prediction error, and motivation; thus, dysfunctional dopamine signaling has been tied to several neuropsychiatric disorders, including substance use disorder (SUD) and depression. While most research has focused on striatal DA signaling, it has been recently described that the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) also exhibits topographical organization of mostly non-overlapping dopaminoceptive populations: those expressing the DA receptor type 1 (D1) or 2 (D2). It has been described in the striatum that these D1 vs. D2 cells contribute to distinct and overlapping of reward and aversive processing and their neuromodulation. Dr. Kondev will characterize how D1 and D2 cells within the vHPC regulate the rewarding effects of drugs of abuse. Using behavior, fiber photometry, and RNA-sequencing, she will delineate how cocaine exposure differentially modulates the activity, function, and transcriptome of D1 vs. D2 cells, as well as how these cells promote distinct function of reward processing: associative learning (D1-dependent) and motivation (D2-dependent).These data will shed light on non-striatal dopaminergic regulation of motivated behavior, with implications for understanding critical features of SUD formation and motivated behavior.