Dr. Valyear is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and a member of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health at the University of British Columbia. His research program leverages optical neuroscience tools to reveal the cells, circuits, and regional dynamics that serve to reinforce and disengage behaviour – this program aims to inform the development of efficacious treatments for addiction.

Dr. Valyear received a BSc and MSc in Psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University before completing a PhD in Psychology in the Centre for Studies in Behavioural Neurobiology at Concordia University. He then completed postdoctoral fellowships at McGill and Boston University.

Psychopathologies are often mischaracterized as engagement in problematic behaviour but many behaviours, like food and alcohol consumption, are not inherently pathological – it is a failure to disengage that renders these behaviours pathological. Dr. Valyear’s lab investigates neural substrates that subserve the reinforcement and disengagement of behaviour to understand, and ultimately normalize, neural dysfunction underlying psychopathologies characterized by a failure to disengage behaviour, like binge eating and alcohol use disorder.

Decades of clinical and preclinical work implicate the dopamine system in pathological food and alcohol consumption. What is often overlooked, however, is that dopamine neurons have distinct striatal innervation patterns and contributions to behaviour. Further complicating this picture is that dopaminergic and glutamatergic inputs to the striatum interact to shape the activity of downstream neurons. Dr. Valyear’s lab uses cutting-edge optical neuroscience tools to dissect the contributions of inputs to striatal physiology and link these substrates to fundamental psychological processes, like reinforcement and disengagement.

For a full list of publications, visit https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=l4yNaUUAAAAJ&hl=en

Valyear, M. D., Eustachon, N. M-L, Alymova, I., Tremblay, B.N., Mitrikeski, N. M., Britt, J. P*. A disengaging property of medial accumbens shell dopamine. BioRxiv.

Valyear, M. D., Eustachon, M-L., and *Britt, J. P. (2024). Attribution of palatability to alcohol and alcohol-paired flavors. Physiol Behav, 277, (114500), 1-10.

Valyear, M. D. et al Chaudhri, N. (2024). Augmenting glutamatergic, but not dopaminergic, activity in the nucleus accumbens shell disrupts responding to a discrete alcohol cue in an alcohol context. Eur J Neurosci, 1-19.

Valyear, M. D. and *Britt, J. P. (2023). A new circuit underlying the renewal of appetitive Pavlovian responses: Commentary on Brown and Chaudhri (2022). Eur J Neurosci, 780-783.
-Featured EJN image of the week

Valyear, M. D. et al Chaudhri N. (2023). Learning processes in relapse to alcohol use: lessons from animal models. Psychopharm, 240, 393-416.
-Highlighted article of special issue

Segal, D., Valyear, M. D. and Chaudhri N. (2022). The role of context on responding to an alcohol-predictive cue in female and male rats. Alcohol, 99, 70-81.

Valyear, M. D. and *Eikelboom, R. (2021). Reducing caloric intake allows access-induced consumption differences to emerge with concentrated sucrose solutions. Physiol Behav, 234 (113388), 1-10.

Valyear, M. D. et al *Chaudhri, N. (2020). Dissociable mesolimbic dopamine circuits control responding triggered by alcohol-predictive discrete cues and contexts. Nat Commun, 11 (3764), 1-14.
-Recipient of CAN-CIHR INMHA Brain Star Award
-Recipient of Jane Stewart Annual Prize

Valyear, M. D. and *Chaudhri, N. (2020). Context controls the timing of responses to an alcohol-predictive conditioned stimulus. Behav Processes, 173, 1-4.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship (2024-2025)
European Behavioural Pharmacology Society Travel Award (2024)
Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology Jock Cleghorn Prize (2023)
Canadian Psychological Association Certificate of Academic Excellence (2021)
CAN-CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction Brain Star Award (2021)
Bourse de formation du Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (2021-2024)
Jane Stewart Prize (2021)

Dr. Valyear is currently accepting graduate students.