Dr. Mihaela Iordanova

Biography

Mihaela Iordanova completed her undergraduate studies at the University of New South Wales, earning a Bachelor's degree with Honours in Psychology in 2001. She conducted doctoral studies focused on the role of accumbal opioid dopamine transmission in error-correction during fear conditioning under the guidance of R. Frederick Westbrook. As part of her doctoral research, Mihaela visited the laboratory of Simon Killcross at Cardiff University, where she explored the role of dopamine in predicting fear responses. After completing her PhD in 2006, Mihaela pursued post-doctoral training at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, working alongside prominent scientists such as Rob Honey and Mark Good on neurocircuitry related to mnemonic integration and updating. She developed strong collaborations with researchers including John Pearce, John Aggleton, and Dominic Dwyer. Driven to understand how neurons adjust their firing patterns in response to environmental stimuli, she joined Geoffrey Schoenbaum's laboratory at the Atlantic laboratory. Mihaela has held appointments at the University of Maryland and at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, where she investigated how cells in the central nucleus of the amygdala modulate firing under different reward conditions. In 2014, she was appointed as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University, where she is part of the Centre for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology.

Research Interests