Treating addiction through the neuroscience of craving, social connection, and neuroplasticity.
Mission
Our long-term goal is to find and develop treatments for psychiatric disorders that currently have none.
We are a behavioural neuroscience and psychopharmacology lab. Most of our work is in rats and mice, where we combine behavioural models, pharmacology, circuit manipulation and in vivo recording to work out how these disorders develop and where they might be treated. Addiction, especially to methamphetamine, is our main focus. We also study psychedelics and cognition, oxytocin and social behaviour, and the basic biology of social reward, including the role of astrocytes. Getting from a lab finding to a treatment needs people with different expertise, so we work closely with other labs and with industry.
Where we want to have impact
- Treatments for methamphetamine addiction
- Social reward pathways as a transdiagnostic therapeutic target
- Psychedelic-inspired, non-hallucinogenic medications that promote neural and psychological flexibility
- Moving basic discoveries toward the clinic with industry partners
People
How we work
Everyone here knows roughly what everyone else is doing, and people pitch in to get each other's experiments done, whether that's a surgery, a histology run, or a photometry analysis that won't behave. Methods get passed around in both directions: PhD students have taught postdocs new techniques, and postdocs train students in turn. Most people leave with skills well beyond their own project.
Current students
Honours and Master of Brain & Mind Sciences students.
Anneleise Rose
Bidirectional control of striatal astrocytes in operant food vs social conditioning.
Arshia Vora
Do prelimbic astrocytes encode social vs food reward consumption and seeking behaviour?
Jade Graham
Does psilocybin alter behaviour allocation depending upon punishment insensitivity?
Kenny Song
Does psilocybin alter cortical perineuronal net morphology?
Louie Wei
Does psilocybin alter stress-induced reinstatement of drug-seeking, and extinction and retention of aversive memories?
Honours & Master's
Psychology Honours, SOMS Honours, and Master of Brain and Mind Sciences. Tell us what you'd like to work on.
Past students and their projects.
Shiya Liu
CRISPR-Cas9 knockdown of fronto-striatal OXTR in social operant conditioning.
Tom Latimer
Do non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists improve reversal learning?
Mun Kit Lee
Does 5-HT2A or 5-HT1A agonism improve methamphetamine-induced cognitive deficits?
Wenxin Zhang
Neuronal vs astrocytic control over social reward in the striatum.
Dr Joel Raymond
Sleep, sociability, and oxytocin. Co-supervised by Prof Michael Bowen.
Dr Rhianne Scicluna
Novel cannabinoid and lipoxygenase therapeutics for opioid use disorder. Co-supervised by Prof Michael Bowen.
Isabella Courtney
Oxytocin and social operant conditioning.
Jennifer Oraha
Does repeated withdrawal from opioids exacerbate future withdrawal?
Our science
PreviewPartners & funders
Funded by & partnered with
Academic collaborators
News & updates
Science Day
Once a quarter the whole lab spends a full day together at Science Day.
Presenting our methamphetamine research to the NMI and AFP
We visited the National Measurement Institute and the Australian Federal Police to present our research on methamphetamine addiction.
Tylah Doolan awarded a PhD completion scholarship
Ann-Sofie Bjerre publishes in Science Advances
The paper comes from her PhD work. Read it in Science Advances.
$20K seed grant from the Centre for Drug Discovery and Innovation
Alex Athanasopoulos and Nick Everett received a seed grant for “Circuit-based neuroplasticity as a translational preclinical assay for non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A therapeutic development.”
End-of-year lab party
We finished the year with a party.
Alex Athanasopoulos wins the Drug Discovery Initiative PhD prize
Conference presentations in Portugal and Spain
Ann-Sofie Bjerre, Tylah Doolan, Alex Athanasopoulos, and Olivia Gilmore McKimm presented their research at the Society for Social Neuroscience (Portugal) and the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (Spain).
Ann-Sofie Bjerre awarded the Larry J. Young Memorial Travel Fellowship
The fellowship funded her trip to the Society for Social Neuroscience meeting in Portugal.
Wenxin Zhang awarded a Cold Spring Harbor Asia course scholarship
The scholarship covered the summer course “The Brain Enlightened — Advanced Imaging Techniques in Neuroscience.”
Ann-Sofie Bjerre awarded a School of Psychology ECR Pathway grant
The grant supports her project “Fronto-striatal circuitry underlying social reward processing.”
Olivia Gilmore McKimm visits the Florey Institute
Olivia Gilmore McKimm spent a month in Prof Laura Jacobson’s lab at the Florey Institute learning qEEG methods.
National Industry PhD Program grant with Xylo Bio
Alex Athanasopoulos and Nick Everett were awarded a National Industry PhD Program grant (2024–2028), partnered with Xylo Bio, to support Alex’s PhD candidature: “Understanding the efficacy and neurobiology of psilocybin and novel 5-HT2A agonists for treating methamphetamine use disorder.”
CRC-P grant for drug discovery in mental health
Nick Everett is a chief investigator on a Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) grant (2024–2027), “Next generation technology enabling drug discovery for mental health,” with Tessara Therapeutics and Xylo Bio.
NHMRC Investigator Grant (Emerging Leader 1)
Nick Everett was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant (2024–2028): “Developing novel strategies for stimulating the brain oxytocin system to treat methamphetamine addiction.”
Tylah Doolan awarded the Campbell Perry travel award
The award funded a visit to an international addiction neuroscience lab.
Partnership grant with Xylo Bio and the Brain and Mind Centre
Nick Everett was awarded a partnership grant (2023–2024) with Xylo Bio and the Brain and Mind Centre: “Developing safe and effective non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists for treating psychiatric disorders.”