iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 11h

I'm thrilled to announce that our Preclinical Addiction Research Consortium just got upgraded to a brand new P50 NIDA Center of Excellence, and became the Polysubstance Addiction Research Center. Seven years in the making! www.drugaddictionresearch.org/

drugaddictionresearch.org

Polysubstance Addiction Research Center (PARC) | UC San Diego

Polysubstance Addiction Research Center (PARC), A NIDA P50 Center of Excellence at UC San Diego. Identifying convergent and divergent multiscale mechanisms…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Validating an animal model of drug inhalation is hard. Our new mouse vaping model, led by Sélène Zahedi, gets human-relevant blood cotinine levels in a single 1 h session. One more step forward. Full blog post: www.oliviergeorge.com/news/2026-09...

Bar graph of serum cotinine in female and male mice after one hour of 0, 5, 15, or 50 mg/mL nicotine vapor, rising with dose, with males higher than females at 50 mg/mL (Zahedi et al. 2026, Fig. 2).

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Interesting data from @NPR: grant renewals 90+ days late at 4-6x historical rates, but NIH staffs deserve HUGE credits for sending NOAs before fiscal cliff, keeping labs open.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

PubMed got a new toy today. I tried it on two of our lab's PNAS papers. The visualizations are pretty, it's nice to see PubMed getting upgrades. But I have never found citation graphs like these particularly useful for actual research or writing.

PubMed Linked Discoveries timeline view for Kimbrough et al. 2020 PNAS, brain-wide functional architecture remodeling by alcohol dependence, showing the citation neighborhood from 2008 to 2026

PubMed Linked Discoveries timeline view for George et al. 2012 PNAS on mPFC neurons in alcohol withdrawal, with the condition sidebar mislabeling the paper as central nervous system extraskeletal osteosarcoma

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sobering piece of data. 23% of people with a substance use disorder had a suicidal event in their lifetime. That is 16x the rate without SUD, and ~6x after taking into account many other factors like comorbidities.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Super cool device! A wearable patch with acoustic delivery and AI respiratory sensing (is there something not AI nowadays?) reversed fentanyl overdose in mice faster than standard naloxone injection.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Fentanyl plus meth users needed 5-6 ng/mL buprenorphine, not the standard 2-3, to reach abstinence. Polysubstance use produced an estimated 8-fold increase in the EC50! Standard dosing is clearly not enough for them. lnkd.in/g6XtRTmM

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Fiber photometry is an awesome tool and the speed at which it has been democratized has been impressive. The issue is that many labs use sensors without a full characterization of the sensors in relevant in vivo context or without full understanding of the limitations of the sensors.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Cannabis cues raise GABA+ in the prefrontal cortex of people with cannabis use disorder, while controls show no change.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Binge alcohol dysregulate serotonin signaling in opposite directions: down in the ACC, up in the amygdala. The dysfunction is region-, sex-, and stimulus-specific.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

very cool approach. Should also be embedded within journals’ manuscript pre-screening process to ensure that submitted manuscripts actually report data and code that is reproducible and useful. www.nature.com/articles/s4...

nature.com

Reimagining research papers as interactive and reliable AI agents

Nature - Paper2Agent converts research papers into interactive artificial intelligence agents by turning manuscripts, code and data into model context protocol-based tool-invoking systems that...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I enjoyed this paper, early-life stress raises nociceptin expression in the VTA to block reward learning in rats and motivated effort in depressed humans.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Opioid-stimulant co-use predicts worse insomnia than either drug alone during residential treatment. Co-use is harder to treat than the sum of its parts. Interestinggly Anhedonia was high in ~40% of individual but did not differ between groups. Perhaps a ceiling effect? doi.org/10.1016/j.d...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Does punishment sensitivity predict... POOR self-control? Would be interested to hear from folks using punishment-resistant drug intake as behaviorla marker of addiction vulnerability and poor self-control think of this paper.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

FGFR1 in central amygdala PKCδ+ neurons promote punished alcohol drinking (using AAV and small-molecule).

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Review of safety of 141 rTMS clinical trials in addiction, 4299 participants: mostly mild, temporary side effects like headache or dizziness. No seizures from active stimulation. The safety case for rTMS in SUD is very solid. doi.org/10.1016/j.d...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A tour de force by the Gavan McNally lab.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Every pharmacokinetic formula we use to estimate the brain/blood exposure to drugs has been calculated at the population level. They work.... on average.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Oral semaglutide reduced heavy drinking days, drinks per drinking day, naturalistic craving, alcohol-related consequences, and cannabis use days in an 8-week RCT for alcohol use disorder. Very impressive results confirming previous studies in humans and rodent.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Only 61% of US retail pharmacies made same-day over the counter naloxone available, a year after FDA approval. Even more shocking "When pharmacists without same-day naloxone were asked about alternative sources, approximately half provided no suggestion."

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

GLP-1 receptor agonists decreases alcohol and substance use hospitalizations during treatment. The effect slowly disappears after stopping GLP1.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

No safe level of alcohol found. Mortality risk exceeds 1-in-100 above 8.5 drinks per week, and hits 1-in-25 at 14 drinks per week. The "low-dose protection" story is dead. doi.org/10.15288/js...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Near-daily cannabis users were more likely to use after high positive affect, not negative affect. Cannabis briefly boosted mood but the effect faded fast. Emotion regulation drove less of this than expected. doi.org/10.1111/add...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Only 1 in 6 adults with co-occurring addiction and mental illness received treatment for both. Race and insurance gaps drive this. Integrated care is not optional, it is the baseline we keep failing to meet. doi.org/10.1176/app...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Two spots in the left lateral OFC predicted cocaine relapse with AUC up to 0.90. Each had protective and risk circuits.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

The negative-affect model of drinking (and drug use) has always had a gap: not everyone who feels bad drinks or use drugs. This paper suggest a potential explanation. Distress intolerance adds a layer to the negative affect status in whether or not it causes craving.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Fentanyl has become so ubiquitous that kids do not register it as dangerous. Less than half of 8th graders see trying fentanyl once as high risk. that normalization is a crisis on its own. Risk perception drives behavior. doi.org/10.1001/jam...

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Interesting meta-analysis showing enriched environments decreases cocaine-seeking across 48 rodent studies using CPP (A), self-administration (B), and locomotor sensitization (C). Remarkable reproducibility across laboratories, particularly for CPP.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Clever use of a complex behavioral task to show that BLA dopamine tracks emotional salience, not value or prediction error. Threat/Safety cues drive larger, sustained signals than reward/neutral cues. Dopamine in the BLA is very much different than in the striatum.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

This paper took nine years and was, honestly, a labor of love and a fair amount of suffering. It took several labs, sustained NIH support, and a lot of people who stuck with it, a whole village!

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Reduced drug use without full abstinence should count as success, not failure.  This topic is very important to me, harm reduction is ALWAYS a success.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Add fentanyl to the list! Acute semaglutide blocks cue-, drug-, and stress-induced fentanyl seeking in rats, with drug- and stress-induced reinstatement dropping to the floor at every dose, and cue-induced seeking down about 70% at the higher doses.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I get more excited by a good behavioral pharmacology paper than by anything else. Great example. Heroin cues drive relapse-like seeking in rats after 385 days of abstinence. And a "drug not available" cue suppresses it just as long, even after a heroin injection. doi.org/10.1038/s41386-026-02447-6

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Reposted by Olivier George

Nicola Sambuco @nicolasambuco.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

One of the best and most interesting papers that I've read in the last year is even featured in a short podcast. Congrats on the fantastic work @brainaddiction.bsky.social! #RewardSignals

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Behind this podcast is an outstanding student, Jarryd Ramborger. If you are interested in his approach using 60 cameras recording behavior simultaneously and a data pipeline using supercomputer clusters throughout the US, he’s your man!

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Reposted by Olivier George

Neuropsychopharmacology @npp-journal.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Our latest episode of NPP BrainPod is out! "Incentive salience, not psychomotor sensitization or tolerance, drives escalation of cocaine self-administration in heterogeneous stock rats"

open.spotify.com

Incentive salience, not psychomotor sensitization or tolerance, drives escalation of cocaine self-administration in heterogeneous stock rats

NPP BrainPod · Episode

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

GLP-1 agonists will be the first meds for polysubstance use disorder. Cocaine, meth, nicotine, alcohol, opioids: same mechanism. For decades the field said animal models couldn't crack mental disorders. The preclinical peptide nerds were onto something. doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2026.05.…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

As a former smoker for 30+ years, nicotine e-cigs never worked for me. Varenicline did. That said, this is a clean randomized trial. 5% nicotine pod vs placebo vape, 6 weeks. 36.5% quit in the nicotine arm vs 11.5% in placebo. About 3x. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.202…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Go big or go home. Bigger reward, faster learning, not exactly news. The addiction field has long used 100 µL rewards. Much of systems neuro stuck with tiny ones, assuming DA saturated. It doesn't. Mice learn ~10x faster with a few large rewards. doi.org/10.1126/science.aeb0813

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

If you have any interest in science, medicine, veterinary medicine, biotechnology, agriculture, conservation, or the future of biomedical research, stop what you are doing and take 5 minutes to submit your input to NIH. You have only until next Tuesday May 26, Your voice MATTERS!

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Not buying the doomsday scenario. AI accelerates research and makes it more replicable, leading to more success, more growth, and more scientist employment, not less. The job will change. But we'll still need scientists to guide and curate. twitter.com/i/web/status/2056898746…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Interesting line from the Robin paper: "All hypotheses, experimental directions, data analyses, and figures in this report were produced by Robin." Curious what NIH thinks. They prohibit grant proposals "substantially developed by AI." twitter.com/i/web/status/2056898746…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

One of many reasons we'll still need scientists for years to come in the AI world. Because sometimes AI produces dogshit, and while the techbros and VCs will gladly eat dogshit, a true human scientist will not. twitter.com/i/web/status/2056956645…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Longitudinal PET study of FAAH (enzyme degrading the endocannabinoid anandamide) in cannabis users. brain FAAH binding rises ~10% within days of stopping cannabis, with the biggest jump in the ventral striatum.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

There is no free lunch in psychopharmacology: 21 longitudinal studies, ~28,000 people, ~24 yrs of follow-up. Cannabis use tracks with lower IQ and worse executive function over time. Effect scales with frequency and dependence. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s…

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Couldn't make GRS/GRC Addiction this year; it turns out my folks didn't really need me there ;-) Congrats @esneddon21, Kokila Shankar, and Selene Bonent-Zahedi!

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Is symptom-based dosing for neonatal opioid withdrawal really better for the infant or just better for the hospital? This is a very interesting study recently highlighted by the NIH. Tailoring treatment to each infant's withdrawal severity is a real step forward.

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Olivier George @brainaddiction.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

NIAAA's P60 Alcohol Research Center mechanism is not being renewed. I’ve had the chance of being part of one for the last 20 years.

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