Novel Directions in the Neuroscience of Drug Addiction: Naturalistic Measures and Treatment Effects

Substance use disorders (SUDs) remain as major challenges confronting psychiatry and neuroscience. They impair functionality, reduce quality-of-life, generate enormous social costs, feature high morbidity and mortality, are notoriously poorly tractable and subject to relapse, and interlace destructively with many other illnesses. SUDS have long been associated with prefrontal cortical dysfunction, but fully understanding their brain bases of SUDs and developing effective remedies rank among the foremost goals of neuroimaging and other psychiatric research. This is the topic of our next lecture.

Our speaker, Dr. Rita Goldstein, is a world-renowned SUDs researcher and clinician who does innovative and path-breaking multimodal neuroimaging (MRI, PET, EEG,...) She has also authored a leading theory of addiction-- the Impaired Response Inhibition and Salience Attribution (iRISA) model-- based on impairment of higher brain functions. Come see Dr. Goldstein’s latest results, hear her theoretical perspectives, and learn about prospects for new, effective treatments for SUDs.