POSTPONED: CNI Seminar: Nicole Petersen

This seminar has been postponed. We look forward to hosting Dr. Petersen in the future.

 

Nicole Petersen
Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences
UCLA

Noninvasive neuromodulation: A new way forward for addiction medicine

Brain imaging has enabled decades of exploration and discovery to better understand brain circuits that underlie addiction. Despite this, addiction remains a major public health crisis with limited effective treatments. Noninvasive neuromodulation is approaching as a solution that capitalizes on neuroimaging-derived insights into the neural mechanisms of addiction. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) offers a noninvasive approach to modulating these circuits and has achieved FDA clearance of the treatment of tobacco use disorder. Yet, clinical utility remains limited, due in part to individual differences in responses. This variation likely reflects differences in underlying neurobiology, yet we understand little about what drives it. This talk will explore how TMS engages addiction-relevant brain networks and examine biological factors that may shape treatment response, particularly sex and sex hormones. Because sex hormones induce widespread, individually meaningful changes in brain connectivity patterns, understanding how these changes modulate neuromodulation efficacy could advance precision medicine approaches to addiction treatment. By using neuromodulation as both a treatment and a discovery tool, we can better understand the circuits we're trying to target and ultimately improve addiction treatment.


A pizza lunch will be served.