In her postdoctoral work, Creed studied DBS in the context of drug addiction in the Lüscher Lab at the University of Geneva. In the context of cocaine addiction, drug-adaptive behavior is driven by remodelling of the brain's reward circuitry, specifically plasticity of the excitatory inputs onto dopaminergic ventral tegmental area neurons. Creed and her colleagues found that cocaine administration leads to long-lasting increases in burst firing due to impaired function of calcium activated small conductance potassium channels (SK channels). Creed found that cocaine exposure drove insertion of GluN3A-containing NMDAR onto VTA dopamine neurons which impaired their excitability and prevented the activation of the SK channels.
