Associate Professor of Psychology
Director of Undergraduate Studies

Clinical Science
Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience

Office: 325 Wilson Hall
Phone: (615) 343-6076
Fax: (615) 323-8449
Email: 

Personal Website

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Degrees

• Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1997.

Research Area

• Dr. Zald uses functional neuroimaging and neuropsychological techniques to examine and map the cognitive, affective, and sensory functions of the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and related limbic regions in humans. The long-term goal of this work is to determine how dysfunction of these areas contributes to affective and anxiety disorders. Related areas of interest focus on the measurement of dopamine and serotonin functioning in humans and the influence of these neurotransmitters on emotional and cognitive processing.

Representative Publications

• Zald, D. H., & Pardo, J. V. (1997). Emotion, olfaction and the amygdala: Amygdala activation during aversive olfaction in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,94, 4119- 4124.
• Zald, D. H., Lee, J. T., Fluegel, K., & Pardo, J. V. (1998). Aversive gustatory stimulation activates limbic circuits in humans. Brain. 121, 1143-1154.
• Small, D. M., Zald, D. H., Jones-Gotman, M., Pardo, J. V., Zatorre, R., Frey, S. & Petrides, M. (1999). Human cortical gustatory areas: A review of functional neuroimaging data. Neuroreport,10, 7 -14.
• Curtis, C. E., Zald, D. H., Lee, J. T. & Pardo, J. V. (2000). Object and spatial alternation at minimal delays activate the human hippocampus. Neuroreport, 11, 2203-2207.
• Royet, J. P., Zald, D. H., Versace, R., Costes, N., Lavenne, F., & Gervais, R. (2000). Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant olfactory, visual, and auditory stimuli: A PET study. Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 7752-7759.
• Zald, D. H., & Depue, R. A. (2001) Serotonergic functioning correlates with positive and negative affect in healthy males. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 71-86.
• Zald, D. H., & Kim, S. W. (2001). The orbitofrontal cortex. In S. P. Salloway P. F. Malloy & J. D. Duffy (Eds.), The Frontal Lobes and Neuropsychiatric Illness . Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 33-70.
• Zald, D.H., Curtis, C.E., Folley, B. & Pardo, J.V. (2002). Prefrontal contributions to delayed spatial and object alternation: a positron emission tomography study. Neuropsychology 16, 182-189.
• Zald, D.H., Hagen, M.C. & Pardo, J. V. (2002). Neural correlates of tasting concentrated quinine and sugar solutions. Journal of Neurophysiology, 87, 1068-1075
• Zald, D.H., Matson, D.L. & Pardo, J.V. (2002). Brain activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlates with individual differences in negative affect. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 99, 2450-2454.
• Zald, D.H. (2003). The human amygdala and the emotional evaluation of sensory stimuli. Brain Research Reviews, 41, 88-123.
• Zald, D.H., Boileau, I., El Deredy, W. Gunn, R., McGlone, F., Dichter, G. and Dagher, A. (2004). Dopamine transmission in the human striatum during monetary reward tasks. Journal of Neuroscience 24, 4105-4112.