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Speakers
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Hamed Ekhtiari, MD, PhD – Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Division Chief of Addiction Psychiatry, UT Southwestern
About the Talk
Addiction remains a leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality worldwide, with limited treatment options for several substance use disorders and substantial heterogeneity in treatment response. Precision neuromodulation has emerged as a promising strategy to address this gap by targeting addiction-relevant brain circuits underlying craving, impaired control and relapse vulnerability.
Building on two decades of human neuroimaging, neuromodulation trials and biomarker development, this talk reviews the scientific rationale for mechanism-informed brain stimulation approaches in addiction treatment. Dr. Ekhtiari shares how advances in functional neuroimaging, circuit-level biomarkers, and computational modeling are enabling individualized target selection and response monitoring for noninvasive neuromodulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic and electrical stimulation, at the same time critically examining key challenges that must be addressed for clinical translation, including variability in neural targets, durability of effects, integration with behavioral and pharmacological treatments, and pathways toward regulatory acceptance. The lecture concludes with a forward-looking perspective on how precision neuromodulation —combined with objective biomarkers — can accelerate innovation, improve treatment outcomes, and move the field toward scalable, personalized interventions for addiction.
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Hamed Ekhtiari, MD, PhD is a physician–scientist and addiction psychiatrist whose work focuses on precision neuromodulation, neuroimaging biomarkers and translational neuroscience approaches to substance use disorders. He is an associate professor of psychiatry and division chief of addiction psychiatry at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he leads research at the intersection of brain circuitry, addiction and personalized interventions. Dr. Ekhtiari’s work integrates functional neuroimaging, noninvasive brain stimulation, and computational modeling to develop mechanism-informed and scalable treatments for addiction and related psychiatric conditions. He is actively involved in international research consortia and professional societies focused on advancing evidence-based neuromodulation and biomarker-driven therapeutics. His work aims to bridge neuroscience discovery with clinical implementation to improve outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders.
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