Bridging the Gap Between Animal Models and Human Addiction: Exploring Translational Paradigms Volume II

Volume I of this Research Topic here opened a productive dialogue between preclinical and clinical perspectives on addiction, exploring how animal models shed light on the psychological mechanisms that drive compulsive drug seeking, cue reactivity, relapse, and cognitive decline. The collection surfaced both the strengths and limitations of cross-species translation, and pointed clearly to where further work is needed.Volume II continues that conversation. Despite decades of research, addiction disorders, whether substance-based or behavioural, remain poorly understood and difficult to treat. A key obstacle is that findings from animal models do not always map cleanly onto human psychological experience. Closing that gap requires sharper translational tools, more comparable behavioural paradigms, and a broader view of who is vulnerable and why.This volume welcomes contributions that advance our psychological understanding of addiction through a translational lens, including but not limited to:• Relapse, extinction, and renewal: behavioural and cognitive processes across species• Incentive salience, sign-tracking, and cue-driven motivation under reward uncertainty• Impulsivity, compulsivity, and inhibitory control in animal and human models• Sex and individual differences in addiction vulnerability and recovery• Cognitive effects of substance withdrawal: paradigm alignment across species• Behavioural addictions (gambling, gaming, binge eating) in translational perspective• Psychological biomarkers that generalise across preclinical and clinical settings• Novel experimental paradigms that improve bench-to-bedside translationWe invite original research articles, systematic reviews, narrative reviews, and perspective pieces that challenge existing models or propose new frameworks for translating addiction science into meaningful clinical outcomes. Topic editors: Salvatore Campanella, Etienne Quertemont Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82549/bridging-the-gap-between-animal-models-and-human-addiction-exploring-translational-paradigms-volume-ii