Looking under the hood: How brain science informs addiction treatment

By: Elena H. Chartoff, PhD, Contributor As a neuroscientist I have been trained to think in a certain way, almost like a car mechanic, who “looks under the hood” at the brains of laboratory rats exposed to drugs. If we can figure out exactly which genes, proteins, brain regions, and neural connections go awry in substance use disorders (SUDs), we can fix those “broken” parts in the brain and design better long-term approaches to…