Dr. Dana Small

Biography

Dana Small is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University, specializing in psychiatry and psychology. She earned her PhD from McGill University in 2001. Her primary research interests lie in utilizing functional neuroimaging techniques alongside neuropsychological, behavioral, psychophysical, genetic, and physiological assessments to explore the brain's representation of taste, smell, flavor, and feeding in humans. Small's work particularly focuses on understanding the dynamic relationship between the brain and obesity, investigating the neural circuits that govern feeding and flavor preference formation, and how these predispositions might lead individuals to gain weight. Additionally, she studies how weight gain is associated with physiological adaptations that influence brain function. Her laboratory is equipped with an fMRI simulator and a fully automated fMRI-compatible olfactometer and gustometer, and her imaging studies are conducted at the Yale MRI Imaging Research Center and the PET Center.

Research Interests