CCN Colloquium: "Oops I did it again.... TMS as a tool to improve sobriety and decrease drug and alcohol relapse through modulation of executive control and salience circuitry."

The struggle between desire and control is as old as human history. With the increasing sophistication of brain imaging techniques, we now have a biological fingerprint of the dueling neural networks that struggle to keep our cravings in-check and our has been described in art, religion, philosophy, and music for centuries. With the FDA-clearance of transcranial magnetic stimulation as the first neural-circuit based therapeutic for smoking cessation, there has been elevated interest in identifying novel brain targets and behavioral primes for improving NIBS addiction outcomes. While most o the research in the substance use disorders field has focused on the The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is a promising target given its role in modulating cue-reactivity across substances and species. Additionally exposure to a salient drug cue or induction of a drug related memory appears to be important for optimizing treatment outcomes. This talk will review the results of the largest studies to date in the TMS for addiction field - highlighting milestones in smoking cessation, psychostimulants, and alcohol use disorder research - many of which have already received regulatory clearance in countries across the world.