Addiction disorders are a major public health problem, affecting up to 10% of the adult population worldwide. Unfortunately, the long-term success rates of rehabilitation are poor, and we don't have any treatments targeting the core neurobiological mechanisms of addiction. One of the major barriers for the development of targeted treatment is that, despite decades of research, we still don't know what the optimal treatment targets in the brain are. In this project, we will collect a large, prospective sample of stroke patients to identify cases where a spontaneous brain lesion has resulted in remission of addiction. This data will be analyzed using a new technique, termed lesion network mapping, allowing us to identify the brain networks mediating addiction remission, both in substance use disorders (smoking, alcohol) and behavioral addiction (gambling). Localizing these networks will provide new, highly promising targets for therapeutic interventions.

2024

2028