Heilig Lab

Translational Research In Psychiatry Lab Basic Science - the 2026 edition✨

🔬 Excited to share our latest review on GABAB receptor dysfunction in #AUD and how #TMS can detect related neurophysiological changes! doi.org/10.1111/acer.7… Thanks to our amazing team! Stay tuned for our upcoming study! 🚀

🏆 Chiara Montemitro @mon_chiara wins the #ECNP2025 Poster Award for our #TMS study on #GABAB receptors and #alcohol use! Huge honour for our work on novel biomarkers for alcohol addiction. @ecnptweets

Another reason to celebrate! Rebecca Böhme @RebeccaBoehme receives the Eric K. Fernström Prize 2025 for young, particularly promising and successful researchers at Linköping University @CSAN_LiU . Congratulations!! liu.se/en/news-item/r…

Happy birthday to us! Ten years of great science @CSAN_LiU. We are celebrating in the best possible way during our anniversary retreat: with sharing science, fantastic presentations, and cake! 🥳

Warm congratulations to the extraordinary Ida Fredriksson @CSAN_LiU for her #EBPS2025 Early Career Award! 👏☀️ @EurBehavPharm

#ThisWeekInNPP Studies in animal models & healthy humans suggested that increasing the eCB ligand AEA (via FAAH inhibition) may be a novel PTSD treatment - but did it work? Find out in this recent paper from @MayoOnTheBrain @canna_brain @Heilig_Lab & co nature.com/articles/s4138…

And there is more to celebrate! 🥳 The @EurBehavPharm Early Career Award was awarded to Ida Fredriksson @CSAN_LiU! Grattis Ida!

Markus Heilig receives the 2025 Distinguished Researcher Award @RSAposts! From the report: "Dr. Heilig is clearly an international leader who has done outstanding bench-to-bedside research that has had a huge impact on AUD research and on our society." Congrats from the lab!!

A huge thank you to all of our speakers and attendees for making "The Intersection of Stress and Addiction" such a success!

Our final keynote speaker, Dr. Markus Heilig @Heilig_Lab, delivered a thought-provoking talk on “Deconstructing alcohol addiction in search of druggable molecular mechanisms”!

Congratulations to our newest doctor @SanneToivainen! Last Friday she brilliantly defended her thesis "Compulsive Alcohol Self-Administration in Rats: Neural Mechanisms and Sex Differences".

She nailed it! @SanneToivainen A Swedish classic: the spikning of the thesis. Looking forward to Sanne's PhD defense on April 11th!

🧠 Exciting news at @CSAN_LiU We just wrapped up the last session for our #TMS study about #GABAB receptors in #alcohol consumption. Special thanks to all our participants! Stay tuned for outcomes and insights, and check out our preregistration: osf.io/j4hgs.

Why do some heavy drinkers keep choosing alcohol over other rewards, even when it costs them? An interesting paper from the @Heilig_Lab looks into how drinking severity influences choice when alcohol competes with natural reward.

Congratulations to the newly minted doctor doctor @KChanthongdee! He successfully defended his thesis on epigenetic mechanisms underlying fear memories and alcohol relapse @CSAN_LiU, co-supervised by @EstelledBarbier. Interesting discussions with opponent Howard Becker @MedUnivSC

Whilst there are numerous transgenic mouse lines, rat lines are sparse. Now, we can target PKCdelta neurons in rats too! Our paper on the generation and characterisation of the PKCdelta-cre knock-in rat in JNeurosci @SfNJournals

#JNeurosci: Toivainen, Petrella et al. generated and characterized a novel PKCδ-Cre knock-in rat model that offers novel opportunities for functional studies of PKCδ-expressing neurons in behaviors relevant to human conditions. @liu_universitet jneurosci.org/lookup/DOI/10.…

Lab retreat with the preclinical research group. A day full of wonderful science, great discussions and new ideas!

Time for another CSAN seminar! Today Wolfgang Sommer @UniHeidelberg gave a very nice translational overview on the concepts of #habit and #compulsion in #AUD.