The Avery Lab
🧠 Cognitive Neuroscience · OSU-CHS · Tulsa, OK

We study why some foods feel good, why cravings are hard to resist, and what the brain is doing in between.

Our research focuses on taste, food-related cognition, and reward processing, all rooted in the insular cortex but involving brain-wide neurocircuitry which we examine using functional MRI.

Our Research → Google Scholar
Research Areas

Questions that drive us

We are united by a common question: how does the brain adapt to bodily need and an ever-changing environment to generate the thoughts, cravings, and decisions that define our relationship with food and reward?

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How is the perception of taste represented in the brain?

Using high-resolution fMRI and multivariate pattern analyses, we've shown that the insular cortex encodes taste quality through distributed population codes rather than fixed topographic maps. One notable finding: simply viewing food photographs activates taste-quality-specific activity patterns in gustatory cortex — linking perception, imagery, and appetite in a shared neural language.

fMRI MVPA Gustatory Cortex Population Coding
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How does the brain listen to the body?

We study how the insula integrates visceral signals — gut tension, heartbeat, breath — with gustatory and emotional processing to produce subjective states. Our research has mapped the insula's functional architecture and documented how interoceptive processing breaks down in psychiatric conditions including major depression, anorexia nervosa, and substance use disorders.

Interoception Insula Body-Brain Interface Psychiatry
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Why do we care about what we eat?

Food is more than calories and carbs. Our approach to it is shaped by environment, culture, and implicit concepts — like what we believe is or isn't healthy — all of which must be integrated with our biological drive to maintain homeostasis. We use fMRI and behavioral modeling to study how the brain manages this careful balance: how limbic regions encode food pleasantness, how prefrontal networks implement health goals and self-control, and how dietary context reshapes these circuits over time.

Decision Modeling OFC & PFC Reward Self-Control
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How does early life experience influence risk of substance dependence?

The VERA project (Vaping, Executive function, Reward & Adversity) investigates how early life adversity shapes the brain circuits governing reward and self-control — and how those changes contribute to vulnerability for e-cigarette use and substance dependence. Using fMRI and behavioral measures, we examine how interoceptive awareness and executive function mediate the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and addiction-related outcomes in young adults.

VERA Study ENDS / E-cigarettes Early Adversity Executive Function
Publications

Selected Works

Full list available on Google Scholar (5,000+ citations).

2025
Avery JA, Carrington M, Ingeholm JE, Darcey VL, Simmons WK, Hall KD, Martin A.
Automatic engagement of limbic and prefrontal networks in response to food images reflects distinct information about food hedonics and inhibitory control
Communications Biology
8(1), 270
doi →
2025
Zhou Q, Feldman H, Avery J, Dewitt JE, Reynolds R, Chen G, Atlas L.
Domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms in valuation and interoception
Journal of Neuroscience
2024
Adamic EM, Teed AR, Avery JA, de la Cruz F, Khalsa SS.
Hemispheric divergence of interoceptive processing across psychiatric disorders
eLife
13:RP92820
doi →
2024
Carrington M, Liu AG, Martin A, Avery JA.
Naturalistic food categories are driven by subjective estimates rather than objective measures of food qualities
Food Quality & Preference
113, 105073
doi →
2023
Darcey VL, Guo J, Courville A, Gallagher I, Avery JA, Simmons WK, Ingeholm JE, Herscovitch P, Martin A, Hall KD.
Dietary fat restriction affects brain reward regions in a randomized crossover trial
JCI Insight
8(12)
doi →
2023
Avery JA, Carrington M, Martin A.
A common neural code for representing imagined and inferred tastes
Progress in Neurobiology
223, 102423
doi →
2022
Avery JA, Liu AG, Carrington M, Martin A.
Taste metaphors ground emotion concepts through the shared attribute of valence
Frontiers in Psychology
13, 938663
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2021
Avery JA, Liu AG, Ingeholm JE, Gotts SJ, Martin A.
Viewing images of foods evokes taste quality-specific activity in gustatory insular cortex
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
118(2)
doi →
2021
Avery JA.
Against gustotopic representation in the human brain: there is no Cartesian restaurant
Current Opinion in Physiology
20, 23–28
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2020
Avery JA, Liu AG, Ingeholm JE, Riddell CD, Gotts SJ, Martin A.
Taste quality representation in the human brain
Journal of Neuroscience
40(5), 1042–1052
doi →
2020
Wohltjen S, Avery JA, Gotts SJ, Martin A.
Changes in functional network connectivity during naturalistic viewing are explained by emotional responses, not cognitive control
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
117(45), 28326–28334
doi →
2017
Kerr KL, Moseman SE, Avery JA, Bodurka J, Simmons WK.
Influence of visceral interoceptive experience on the brain's response to food images in anorexia nervosa
Psychosomatic Medicine
79(7), 777–784
doi →
2017
Avery JA, Darcey VL, Liu AG, Ingeholm JE, Riddell CD, Simmons WK, Martin A.
Insula and OFC represent overlapping but distinct information about experienced taste
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
105(6), 1399–1406
doi →
2016
Simmons WK, Burrows K, Avery JA, Kerr KL, Savage CR, Drevets WC.
Depression-related increases and decreases in appetite: dissociable patterns of aberrant activity in reward and interoceptive neurocircuitry
American Journal of Psychiatry
173(4), 418–428
doi →
2015
Avery JA, Kerr KL, Ingeholm JE, Burrows K, Bodurka J, Simmons WK.
A common gustatory and interoceptive representation in the human mid-insula
Human Brain Mapping
36(8), 2996–3006
doi →
2015
Kerr KL, Moseman SE, Avery JA, Bodurka J, Zucker NL, Simmons WK.
Altered insula activity during visceral interoception in weight-restored patients with anorexia nervosa
Neuropsychopharmacology
41(2), 521–528
doi →
2014
Avery JA, Drevets WC, Moseman SE, Bodurka J, Barcalow JC, Simmons WK.
Major depressive disorder is associated with abnormal interoceptive activity and functional connectivity in the insula
Biological Psychiatry
76(3), 258–266
doi →
2014
Simmons WK, Rapuano KM, Ingeholm JE, Avery J, Kallman S, Hall KD, Martin A.
The ventral pallidum and orbitofrontal cortex support food pleasantness inferences
Brain Structure & Function
219(2), 473–483
doi →
2013
Simmons WK, Avery JA, Barcalow JC, Bodurka J, Drevets WC, Bellgowan PS.
Keeping the body in mind: insula functional organization and functional connectivity integrate interoceptive, exteroceptive, and emotional awareness
Human Brain Mapping
34(11), 2944–2958
doi →
2013
Simmons WK, Rapuano KM, Kallman SJ, Ingeholm JE, Miller B, Gotts SJ, Avery JA, Hall KD, Martin A.
Category-specific integration of homeostatic signals in caudal but not rostral human insula
Nature Neuroscience
16(11), 1551–1552
doi →
Lab Members

The People

The Avery Lab is growing. We welcome prospective students and researchers with interests in cognitive neuroscience, fMRI methods, interoception, and addiction. Reach out to learn more.

Jason Avery, PhD — Principal Investigator

Jason Avery, PhD

Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. Dr. Avery studies how the brain represents taste, interoception, and food reward using functional neuroimaging. He examines how sensory, emotional, and decision-making processes converge within circuits anchored by the insular cortex and prefrontal cortex. Before joining OSU-CHS, he was a Research Fellow in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH).

Faculty Page Google Scholar Email
Allison Drew — Research Assistant

Allison Drew

Research Assistant

Allison graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in English and Psychology (Neuroscience Track), where she completed an honors thesis on corticolimbic connectivity and early life adversity in the CANDLab under Drs. Dylan Gee and Lucinda Sisk. She now investigates addiction, interoception, reward processing, and the impacts of early adversity, with broad interests in neuroimaging and the clinical applications of trauma and resilience research.