The Ceceli Cognitive Control Lab at Mount Sinai

Welcome to the Ceceli Cognitive Control Lab! Housed within the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, our research is dedicated to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of self-control. We are particularly interested in studying the motivational, affective, and motor facets of self-control processes, how they manifest in clinical conditions (e.g., substance use disorders), and how they may be restored. To this end, we employ multi-modal methods, including structural and functional neuroimaging, psychophysiology, laboratory and naturalistic task behavior, and real-world clinical assessments. The ultimate goal of our efforts is to identify predictors of clinical vulnerability and offer neuroscience-informed improvements to available interventions. We are funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundations, and generous support from the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai.

Recent publications

Enhancing Ecological Validity in Habit Research via Naturalistic Methods

A. Ceceli, E. Tricomi

David V. Smith, Patricia L. Lockwood, Dominic S. Fareri, Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, 2026, pp. 183--196

Neurobehavioral correlates of inhibitory control in youth at-risk for early low-level alcohol use initiation: neuroimaging findings from the ABCD study

Faith Adams, A. Ceceli, Siddhartha Peri, I. Ivanov, M. Parvaz

Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2026

Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement rebalances prefrontal responses to drug and natural reward cues in opioid use disorder

Y. Huang, A. Ceceli, G. Kronberg, K. Drury, S. G. King, N. McClain, Y. Y. Wong, M. Boros, E. Butelman, Pierre-Olivier Gaudreault, M. Parvaz, N. Alia-Klein, E. L. Garland, R. Goldstein

medRxiv, 2026

The neural signature of methylphenidate-enhanced memory disruption in human drug addiction: a randomized clinical trial

A. Ceceli, S. King, K. Drury, N. McClain, John H. Gray, P. S. Dassanayake, J. Newcorn, Daniela Schiller, N. Alia-Klein, Rita Z. Goldstein

medRxiv, 2025

The synergy of methylphenidate- and reconsolidation-based extinction normalizes ventromedial prefrontal function in drug addiction

A. Ceceli, S. King, K. Drury, N. McClain, John H. Gray, P. S. Dassanayake, J. Newcorn, Daniela Schiller, N. Alia-Klein, Rita Z. Goldstein

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025

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Collaborators

Rita Z. Goldstein, Ph.D. (NARC Lab, ISMMS)

Muhammad A. Parvaz, Ph.D. (MAP Lab, ISMMS)

Eduardo Butelman, Ph.D. (NARC Lab, ISMMS)

Nathaniel Daw, Ph.D. (Daw Lab, Princeton)

David V. Smith, Ph.D. (Neuroeconomics Lab, Temple)

What motivates us

Recent publications