Director

Nancy Zucker, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Duke Center for Eating Disorders

My program of research seeks to answer questions such as: “How does a child learn that a certain visceral signal indicates the pangs of hunger rather than the butterflies of fear?” How does such interoceptive sensitivity and accuracy impact self-regulation? How does the social environment influence such interpretations? I am particularly interested in how disruption in these processes impact the pathophysiology of psychosomatic disorders, particularly those of eating and somatic disturbance. My goal is to use the tools and theories of developmental neuroscience to answer these questions so that I may design novel intervention strategies that alter the course of psychosomatic illness. I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, Founder and Director of the Duke Center for Eating Disorders, and am an affiliate faculty member in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center. I love writing children's books for fun, would learn to play the drums if I were coordinated, and would spend an ideal afternoon finding the perfect wine and reading a book in the company of my husband, Kevin; dog, Thor; daughter-ish Emma; and son-ish James.