Aging Brain Matter; a developmental key to addiction risk and resilience

ongoing

Despite neuroscientific advances and innovative treatment efforts, for most people addiction remains chronic. Adolescence marks rapid surges in alcohol and cannabis addiction, but also remarkable recovery rates, as most adolescent addictions naturally resolve over time. Brain development holds an import key to understanding the brain’s recovery potential. However, the impact of age on the mechanisms underlying addiction is largely unknown. Capitalizing on adolescents’ unique socio-cognitive sensitivity and learning flexibility, my goal is to unravel common and unique mechanisms of addiction risk and resilience in adolescents and adults. At the core of my innovative developmental-translational research line is a 3-year longitudinal neuroimaging study in adolescent and adult alcohol and cannabis users. This study will uncover the predictive value of social learning flexibility, motivation, self-control and the brain systems underlying changes in use and problem severity over time. Using the same neuroimaging paradigm, causality will be evaluated in rats that start using alcohol and cannabis either during adolescence or adulthood. Finally, a third set of studies will focus on the development of new methods to capture the complex role of social context and learning in pulling adolescents towards and young adults away from alcohol and cannabis use. Ultimately, these studies will lead to a long-sought socio-cognitive developmental framework of addiction, including novel markers of risk and resilience and novel paradigms to study the role of social context and in addiction. My approach effectively addresses multiple research gaps at once and the theoretical and methodological advances made through this high risk-high gain proposal will not only advance addiction knowledge and treatment, but also set the stage for a new approach to solving psychopathology: an approach in which aging brain matter matters.