Treating addiction through the neuroscience of craving, social connection, and psychedelic plasticity.

My aim is for everyone grappling with a substance use disorder to have access to an effective, evidence-based treatment: one that helps them lead a fulfilling, socially connected, and emotionally healthy life, free from the destructive cycles of addiction.

I want everyone in the lab to feel that their work matters and could one day help someone in need. Beyond the science, I want people to build genuine intrinsic motivation, develop a research identity they are proud of, and gain the capacity to run their own research program if that is what they want.

I want parts of our work to bear directly on translating basic science into clinical therapeutics. We use our skills and our experience at this intersection to help industry, and Australian biotech in particular, make progress in CNS areas where treatments are badly needed. This matters to us: it is how publicly funded work strives toward public good, while keeping the fundamental science that underpins it at the centre.

Everyone is encouraged to develop several advanced skill sets, across surgery, behaviour, neural recordings, microscopy, and histology. That breadth matters in a field that spans disciplines, and in a competitive post-PhD hiring market. We cross-train actively, with PhD students teaching postdocs methods and postdocs teaching students in return.

Sofie's primary work uses freely moving fiber photometry in the lab's social operant model to ask how distinct populations of cells in the prefrontal cortex and striatum encode different aspects of social reward. She also supports neural recordings in disease states and advanced microscopy, and is setting up Neuropixels for single-unit recording across the medial prefrontal cortex.

Fiber photometry; wide-field calcium imaging; Neuropixels (in development); super-resolution microscopy; intracranial surgery, in which she trains the lab's PhD students.

PhD at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and the University of Tasmania. Postdoctoral researcher in the lab at the University of Sydney. Preparing a fellowship on prefrontal control over reward-based decision-making; plans to return to Melbourne in late 2027.

Tylah is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Her current work examines the neurobiological effects of psychedelics and non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists on the methamphetamine-exposed brain, primarily at the level of microglia and the processes that drive changes in cortical plasticity. She also holds deep expertise in gold-standard models of methamphetamine self-administration, which the lab uses to develop new therapies and to characterise candidate compounds for progression toward the clinic. Her postdoctoral position directly supports a CRC-P grant, in partnership with Xylo Bio and Tessara Therapeutics. Tylah completed her PhD in the Everett lab, on the neurobiology of oxytocin-based therapies and how oxytocin receptors interact with methamphetamine addiction.

How psychedelics and non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists affect the methamphetamine-exposed brain, focused on microglia and the mechanisms that drive cortical plasticity.

Intravenous self-administration with jugular catheter surgery; intracranial surgery for viral infusions into difficult regions including the hypothalamus; fibre-photometry implants; histology and immunohistochemistry; advanced microscopy; molecular biology including ELISAs.

Psilocybin and non-hallucinogenic psychedelic analogues for methamphetamine use disorder, from serotonergic pharmacology and the head-twitch response to viral-and-imaging work on neuroplasticity and how psilocybin shapes the integration of aversive information.

IV self-administration; serotonergic pharmacology; head-twitch response; the social operant platform he helped build; combined viral and imaging techniques.

BPsych (Hons), in the lab 2023. RA 2024. PhD since 2024, through the National Industry PhD Program with Xylo Bio.

Olivia is a PhD candidate in the lab, which she began in October 2026. She investigates the electrophysiological signatures of psychedelics and non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists, combining cortical EEG with multisite depth electrodes that stimulate and record activity across the brain, tracking these signatures longitudinally within the same animals. She is using this approach to build a new model of brain-wide functional neuroplasticity. Her work has already shaped both academic and industry-partner programs: she has characterised the spectral signatures of psilocybin, a range of other psychedelics, and novel non-hallucinogenic compounds, and these findings have fed into clinical trials now underway. Olivia joined the lab as an Honours student, working on cognitive flexibility and psilocybin, then worked as a research assistant from 2025 until her PhD began.

The effects of psilocybin and non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists on brain-wide neuroplasticity, measured with multi-electrode electrophysiology across days and weeks.

Rat behavioural tasks including operant cognitive flexibility; subcutaneous injections and drug preparation; mouse neurophysiology including qEEG and Python analysis pipelines; related stereotaxic surgery.

Master's on the contribution of endogenous hypothalamic oxytocin signalling to social operant reward and motivation, using Gq- and Gi-coupled DREADDs in oxytocin neurons. Now supports projects across psychedelics, non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists, and alcohol use disorder.

Chemogenetics (Gq/Gi DREADDs in oxytocin neurons); social operant behaviour; immunohistochemistry; the mouse head-twitch response pipeline.

Master of Brain and Mind Sciences, University of Sydney (2025), in the lab. RA since 2025. Planning a PhD.

Clinically translatable biomarkers, currently EEG signatures that can be recorded the same way in animals and in people, so a finding can move from preclinical models toward the clinic. Grounded in molecular neuroscience, with the aim of keeping translational measures tied to the underlying neurobiology.

Immunohistochemistry; RNAscope; whole-brain clearing and imaging (iDISCO); AAV design and production; optimisation of molecular biology protocols for novel targets; data-analysis pipelines for histology; EEG for clinically translatable biomarkers.

[Training details to come.]

How hard will an animal work for a drug — or for social contact — and how does that change with dependence?

We measure motivated behaviour directly. Animals work for intravenous drug infusions or for access to a social partner on operant schedules, and behavioural-economic models of intermittent access quantify how much an animal will pay as the cost rises. A social-versus-drug choice task asks whether social contact can compete with drug reward. Tests of cognition and anxiety track the wider behavioural cost of dependence.

[A few paragraphs written by the lab member leading this work — the motivation behind it, what we have found so far, and where it is heading.]

Intravenous self-administration (with jugular catheter surgery); the lab’s social operant platform; behavioural-economic intermittent-access modelling; social-versus-drug choice; cognition and anxiety assays on Med Associates systems.

[Link to a relevant paper — ours or from the literature]

What in a drug drives benefit, and what drives harm?

We separate the part of a compound’s action that might be therapeutic from the part that causes unwanted effects. For psychedelics that means comparing psilocybin with non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists, using the head-twitch response as a behavioural readout of 5-HT2A (and 5-HT1A) engagement. For oxytocin it means mapping endogenous signalling and astrocytic regulation, and testing where intranasal dosing reaches its limits.

[A few paragraphs written by the lab member leading this work — the motivation behind it, what we have found so far, and where it is heading.]

Serotonergic and psychedelic pharmacology; non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists; head-twitch response (5-HT1A / 5-HT2A); oxytocin pharmacology, including intranasal dosing.

[Link to a relevant paper — ours or from the literature]

Which neurons actually cause the behaviour?

We move from correlation to causation by switching defined populations of neurons on or off during behaviour. Gq- and Gi-coupled DREADDs let us drive or silence oxytocin neurons and ask how that changes social motivation. Viral vectors deliver these tools — along with CRISPR edits and activity sensors — to specific cell types and circuits.

[A few paragraphs written by the lab member leading this work — the motivation behind it, what we have found so far, and where it is heading.]

Chemogenetics (Gq / Gi DREADDs, including in oxytocin neurons); AAV delivery for DREADDs, CRISPR, and photometry sensors.

[Link to a relevant paper — ours or from the literature]

What is the brain doing while it happens?

We record neural activity in freely moving animals during behaviour. Fiber photometry tracks how prefrontal and striatal populations encode social reward; Neuropixels (in development) will add single-unit resolution across the medial prefrontal cortex. In the psychedelic work, EEG captures translatable signatures of 5-HT2A drugs, with polysomnography and seizure profiling extending the readouts.

[A few paragraphs written by the lab member leading this work — the motivation behind it, what we have found so far, and where it is heading.]

Fiber photometry; wide-field calcium imaging; Neuropixels single-unit recording (in development); EEG with surgery; polysomnography; seizure profiling; Python / R analysis pipelines.

[Link to a relevant paper — ours or from the literature]

What changed in the brain, and where?

We map where signalling molecules sit and how circuits change after drug exposure or treatment. Immunohistochemistry and confocal microscopy localise proteins and viral expression; multichannel fluorescence and super-resolution microscopy resolve fine structure that standard light microscopy misses.

[A few paragraphs written by the lab member leading this work — the motivation behind it, what we have found so far, and where it is heading.]

Immunohistochemistry; confocal and multichannel fluorescence microscopy; super-resolution microscopy.

[Link to a relevant paper — ours or from the literature]