Translational biomarker development for precision psychedelic medicine in addiction

Gambling disorder leaves specific, measurable traces in the brain’s wiring, and this project will track whether psychedelic therapy can repair them. The problem is that addiction treatments remain blunt tools. For gambling disorder—a condition affecting roughly 1–2% of the population, with no approved medications—clinicians lack objective ways to know which patients will respond to a given therapy, or how the therapy actually changes the brain. This project builds functional MRI tasks that probe the exact circuits known to malfunction in gambling disorder—those governing reward, impulse control, and decision-making—then tests whether a single dose of psychedelic therapy shifts those signals. The researchers will also compare fMRI results with EEG and blood-based markers to see which measure best captures the therapy’s effects. If the biomarkers prove sensitive, the impact is twofold. First, clinicians could one day use a brain scan to match patients to the right treatment, rather than relying on trial and error. Second, the same biomarkers could accelerate drug development by providing a rapid readout of whether a candidate therapy is hitting its neural target. This is a fundamental science study—it will not immediately change clinical practice—but it is the kind of mechanistic groundwork that, if successful, could transform how addiction trials are designed and how precision psychiatry is delivered.