Exploring the Science Behind Addiction

By studying the brain’s dopamine system, Trinity researcher Filippo Gambacorta ’26 is helping move addiction science forward one neuron at a time. His research focuses on how the brain’s reward system responds to oxytocin, which could lead to a better understanding of the biological mechanisms behind addiction.

Gambacorta, a Neuroscience major from Rome (by way of Switzerland), works in Biology Professor Gerard Beaudoin’s lab on a project titled Oxytocin's Modulatory Effects on Dopamine Neurons in the VTA: Implications for Addiction.

“We want to understand how oxytocin (OXT) modulates the dopamine neuron activity,” says Gambacorta, who plans to pursue a master’s, then Ph.D., in Neuroscience. “And our early results suggest OXT may raise background release of dopamine while lowering input-directed release, and that’s influencing reward-related behaviors.” Understanding this balance is key to developing treatments for addiction, since the dopamine system is central to how the brain forms habits and responds to drugs.

The project is a collaboration between Beaudoin’s lab and Psychology professor K.C. Leong’s lab. “They're doing the behavior aspect and we're doing the neurobiology aspect,” Gambacorta says.

Gambacorta says that everywhere you look, there’s big-time research happening at Trinity.

“There’s four neuroscience research labs here at Trinity, and no matter which one you go into, it’s pretty competitive,” he says. “I reached out to Dr. Beaudoin because I was just interested in his research specifically surrounding dopamine, and he had room for me in his lab.”

Beaudoin has been a great mentor to Gambacorta, who says, “I definitely look up to him. Our project is very complicated, so we do need a lot of his help. Our lab equipment, the electrophysiology equipment that we use, he built it himself from scratch. And so if anything breaks with the machine build, the first person I go to is Dr. Beaudoin: It's like a snap of a finger. He's there and fixes the whole thing, and we can do it again. It's kind of that partnership.”

Plenty of schools have great tech. But at Trinity, undergrads like Gambacorta actually get to use it.

“The beautiful thing about Trinity is that our research facilities are out of this world. So it's like the opportunities that I have here, the research that I can do here, you can't really do at many other undergraduate schools in the world,” says Gambacorta. “This experience has been life-changing, and it has definitely made my chances of getting into a more competitive Ph.D. a lot higher, just for the fact that I'm an undergrad that's going to publish.”

As Gambacorta prepares for his senior year and considers applying to graduate school, he’s grateful for multiple opportunities to make an impact on important research like this as an undergrad. His research could one day contribute to a growing body of work that helps scientists reframe how we approach addiction, not just as a behavioral issue but as a neurochemical one. 

“You don't see many people getting published until maybe they’re 25, and so I'm competing against obviously older people who want to get their PhDs,” he says. “But I'm still 21, and I'll end up having a publication under my belt.”