Behavioral Social Neuroscience Seminar

As for other neuropsychiatric disorders, there are no biomarkers that can quantitatively measure nicotine addiction severity or can track the development of addiction from 'casual' initial use to dependence. As such, no quantitative means to predict treatment outcome success exists, which may at least partially accounts for the enormous recidivism in addiction treatment (>80% in one month and 95% after 6 months). Dr. Stein will present recent data from his lab using both task-based and resting state fMRI, together with behavioral, personality measures and genetic polymorphisms with the long-term goal of developing a brain-based biomarker of addiction. The overarching hypothesis is that as addiction is thought to be a disease of maladaptive neuroplasticity, resultant brain structural and functional changes will not only be detectable using MRI based measures, alterations in these markers will reflect the 'reversibility' or compensatory changes that occur along the abstinence trajectory.