Carli Poisson is a behavioral neuroscientist who uses viral tools to manipulate and record neural activity. Her research focuses on how motivational circuits of the brain are influenced by sensory systems. She is particularly interested in how visual stimuli that predict rewards (otherwise known as cues) activate dopamine neurons to help animals learn about their environment. Her work has relevance in several neuropsychiatric conditions involving reward processing and attention including addiction, autism, and ADHD.

Dr. Poisson is excited to be teaching the next generation of neuroscientists! Her passion lies in education and mentoring, and she is excited to bring her skills back to her alma mater. She has taught courses in a variety of neuroscience specialties including: addiction, anatomy, statistics, development, and learning. 

Carli began her career in neuroscience at Wesleyan ('18) performing research on how the central amygdala contributes to addictive behaviors in rats. After graduating, she moved to Minneapolis and started her doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota, where she was a member of the Medical Discovery Team in Addiction research. She did her thesis work in the lab of Benjamin Saunders. For her dissertation, Dr. Poisson studied how a subcortical region of the brain called the superior colliculus was able to rapidly excite dopamine neurons and change how rats behaved in learning tasks. She received her PhD in neuroscience in the summer of 2024 before joining Wesleyan University as visiting faculty in the psychology department.