Circuit mechanisms of addiction and overeating
Our work defined how addictive drugs hijack mesolimbic dopamine via activation, disinhibition, or reuptake blockade. We identified drug-evoked synaptic plasticity as a driver of compulsive use and mapped accumbens-hypothalamus circuits in hedonic overeating. We pioneered optogenetically inspired neuromodulation informed by circuit mapping in rodent models.
Keywords
addiction / reward learning / neural circuits / optogenetics / dopamine / synaptic plasticity/ obesity