Celeste Napier, PhD Director

Message from the Director

The purpose of the Center for Compulsive Behavior and Addiction is to promote basic neuroscience, translational research and clinical intervention for human addictive and compulsive behaviors, including ADHD, gambling, eating disorders and drug and alcohol abuse.

We have developed a highly integrated center that recognizes front-wave philosophies on the pathology of compulsive behaviors and addictions, including the concept that addiction is a brain disease. This idea requires an integration of disciplines such as neuroscience, psychiatry, pharmacology, neurology, neurosurgery and others.

New research approaches are exponentially advancing our understanding of brain function. These include knock-out and knock-down technology, molecular pharmacology, receptor-mediated signaling, gene transcription and membrane physiology assessments in non-human models of compulsive behaviors and addiction, including craving and relapse into the compulsion following abstinence. These approaches are valuable tools for understanding neuropathology and to identify treatment targets, thus, these approaches are emphasized in the center.

Our center is state of the art with regards to research, treatment and education, and provides an atmosphere that fosters collaboration in all three arenas. Examples of this exciting interdisciplinary movement include multi-species models of addiction that recapitulate human brain states and the use of brain imaging techniques to monitor diagnosis and treatment for psychiatric disorders.

T. Celeste Napier, PhD
Center for Compulsive Behavior and Addiction
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, IL 60612