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Board-certified in addiction medicine, Kathleen Whaley, MD, has provided medication-assisted addiction treatment to patients at New York and Indiana hospitals. As part of her ongoing education in the field, Dr. Kathleen Whaley keeps up with current research as it pertains to new and innovative methods of treating addiction.
For many years, the prominent thinking about conditions like addiction and depression centered on the notion that they had to do with imbalances in the brain’s chemistry. Recent studies, however, have linked addiction to more concrete neurological causes that affect portions of the brain called neurites, which they say retract in response to these conditions. Researchers have begun conducting research on psychedelic medications to promote neural plasticity and the expansion of neurite networks, resulting in greater brain connectivity.
They performed experiments on both vertebrate and invertebrate animals and found the same level of neurite development across numerous species. While psychedelics themselves probably won’t be used in treating addiction, other drugs that use similar mechanisms that could be targeted to specific areas of the brain are likely to be developed, and could become a entirely new avenue for treating addiction and depression.
Kathleen Whaley MD 
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