Choice, Addiction and Neurodysfunctions (Candy)

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Our research activities focus on the psychological and neurobiological determinants of the different stages of addiction (i.e., escalation of drug use, transition to compulsion, abstinence and relapse) to drugs of abuse, like cocaine, nicotine, heroin and alcohol. We also study other behaviors such as overconsumption of sweet foods.

To tackle these questions, we use an animal model approach combined with innovative behavioral procedures, specially designed to probe the psychological processes that underlie drug choices and preferences. We use state-of-the-art methods for in vivo recording and manipulation of neuronal activity in discrete brain circuits in behaving rats, transcriptomics, but also immunohistochemistry methods for large-scale mapping of brain functional activity.

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Selected publications

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• Team leader
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  Serge Ahmed