Cocaine addiction remains a critical public health crisis with no FDA-approved medication currently available. In our latest research, a collaboration between our team and the lab of Eric Kandel at Columbia University, we explored the potential of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) as a high-tech solution. While DBS has successfully treated movement disorders for decades, its role in addiction is more complex than we initially thought. The Question: Can We "Zap" Away Cocaine Use?

We often think of addiction as a slow slide into habit, but what if the brain actually has a "molecular switch" that fundamentally changes how it responds to drugs? Our latest research, a collaboration with the University of Toronto and the lab of Derek van der Kooy, has identified a specific protein that can "flip" a drug-naive brain into a state that looks exactly like nicotine dependence—even without previous drug use. The Question: What Drives the Transition? While we kno

The drug overdose crisis is a call to action for all of us, but to solve it, we need to make sure we are asking the right questions. In our latest perspective piece, a collaboration between our team and the labs of Serge Ahmed at the University of Bordeaux and Nicholas Gilpin at LSU Health New Orleans, we challenge a common assumption in the field: the idea that addiction is defined almost exclusively by "compulsive" behavior. The Question: Is "Compulsion" Everything? In both