Peter C. Holland
Brief BioSketch
November, 2015
Education
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Ph.D., May, 1976, Psychology
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
B.S., June, 1972, Psychology
Professional Experience
Krieger-Eisenhower Professor (2002-present)
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (Chair, 2007-9)
Professor of Neuroscience (2002-present) [courtesy appointment]
Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-2686
James B. Duke Professor (1995-2002); Professor (1989-1995); Associate Professor (1986-1989)
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Associate Dean (1990-1991)
Duke University Box 90086
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0086
Associate Professor (1981-1985); Assistant Professor (1976-1981)
Department of Psychology
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
Teaching
Teaching is an important part of my career. I have taught a wide range of undergraduate and
graduate courses in psychology, neuroscience, and biological anthropology. I served as Director of the
undergraduate Behavioral Biology program at Johns Hopkins for many years, and as Director of
Undergraduate Studies for the Psychology major at Duke University. While associate dean at Duke, I
coordinated undergraduate programs and supervised college-wide academic advising and support. For
30 years I served as Instructor for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories “Molecules to Memory” course
on the neurobiology of learning and memory. Currently I teach undergraduate courses for the
Behavioral Biology Program (Human Origins and Senior Seminar) and the Psychology major (Animal
Cognition, and more sporadically, Animal Behavior and Introductory Psychology), and participate in all of
the team-taught graduate courses for Psychological and Brain Sciences. I supervised 7 graduate students
at Johns Hopkins, served on the advisory committees of 20+ others, and mentored dozens of
undergraduates in research projects.
Research
Interests. My research used a variety of behavioral and neurobiological techniques to study
associative learning in rodents. As a result of associative learning, environmental cues acquire the ability
not only to elicit particular goal-directed responses, but also to evoke sensorily-rich representations of
their associates, alter the allocation of attention in the control of current action and subsequent
learning, and endow previously neutral events with motivational significance. My empirical research
examined commonality in the processing of real events and their associatively-activated
representations, the role of confirmations and violations of learned expectancies in attention, and
mechanisms by which cues related to the presentation and removal of food acquire the ability to
override normal satiety systems and control binge eating in the absence of energetic needs for
consumption. I am especially interested in the roles of amygdala and hypothalamus in modulating
functions of cortical and striatal systems, and computational approaches to understanding functional
connectivity.
Service. Over the course of my career I have served as charter (regular) member of two NIH
review committees and one NSF review committee, as ad hoc member of many other NIH committees
and special emphasis committees, as well as other agency project committees, such as RDoC. I have
reviewed for many private research foundations and government agencies worldwide. I serve on the
editorial boards of several journals, and review for many others.
Grant support. My research was supported by NIH and/or NSF continuously since 1977. I have
no current grant support or pending applications.
Publications. I have over 200 peer-reviewed publications. Ten selected citations follow:
Asem, J.S.A., Schiffino, F.L., & Holland, P.C. (2015). Dorsolateral striatum is critical for the expression of
surprise-induced enhancements in cue associability. European Journal of Neuroscience, 42,
2203-2213.
Esber, G.R., Torres-Tristani, K., & Holland, P.C. (2015). Amygdalo-striatal interaction in the enhancement
of stimulus salience in associative learning. Behavioral Neuroscience, 129, 87-95.
Schiffino, F.L., Zhou, V., & Holland, P.C. (2014). Posterior parietal cortex is critical for the encoding,
consolidation, and retrieval of a memory that guides attention for learning. European Journal of
Neuroscience, 39, 640-649.
Wheeler, D.S., Wan, S., Miller, A., Angeli, N., Adileh, B., Hu, W., & Holland, P.C. (2014). Role of lateral
hypothalamus in two aspects of attention in associative learning. European Journal of
Neuroscience, 40, 2359-2377.
Holland, P. C. (2014). Stimuli associated with the cancellation of food and its cues enhance eating but
display negative incentive value. Learning & Behavior, 42, 365-382.
Holland, P.C., Asem, J.S.A., Galvin, C.P., Hepps Keeny, C., Hsu, M., Miller, A., & Zhou, V. (2014). Blocking
in autoshaped lever-pressing with rats. Learning & Behavior, 42, 1-21.
Esber, G.R., Roesch, M.R., Bali, S., Trageser, J., Bissonette, G.B., Puche. A.C., Holland, P.C., &
Schoenbaum, G. (2012). Attention-related Pearce-Kay-Hall signals in basolateral amygdala
require the midbrain dopaminergic system. Biological Psychiatry, 72, 1012-1019.
Purgert, R.J., Wheeler, D.S., McDannald, M.A., & Holland, P.C. (2012). Role of amygdala central nucleus
in aversive learning produced by shock or by unexpected omission of food. Journal of
Neuroscience, 32, 2461-2472.
Calu, D.J., Roesch, M.R., Haney, R.Z., Holland, P.C., & Schoenbaum, G. (2010). Neural correlates of
variations in event processing during learning in central nucleus of amygdala. Neuron, 68, 9911001.
Jhou, T.C., Fields, H.L., Baxter, M.G., Saper, C.B., & Holland, P.C. (2009). The rostromedial tegmental
nucleus (RMTg), a GABAergic afferent to midbrain dopamine neurons, selectively encodes
aversive stimuli and inhibits motor responses. Neuron, 61, 788-800.