Ladina Gubser has a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Zurich. She was part of the Pharmaco-Neuroimaging and Cognitive-Emotional Processing Research Group (PD Dr. K. Preller) where she was involved in a clinical study that investigated the efficacy of a single psilocybin administration in people with alcohol use disorder. In her master’s thesis she investigated the brain’s reactivity towards alcohol-related stimuli measured with fMRI.

As part of her PhD, she is now conducting the Co-Boost project in the Addictive Disorders Research Group, a clinical study which investigates a new pharmaco-psychotherapeutic intervention in people with cocaine use disorder. The project studies the effects of a single dose of ketamine in combination with fMRI-based neurofeedback training on cocaine use disorder. Her focus lies on the ketamine-induced changes on the glutamate homeostasis in the nucleus accumbens within the reward system and its therapeutic potential.