Project description
When the body drives craving
Addiction is often explained through thoughts, habits, and brain activity. However, many people who experience it describe something more immediate: strong bodily sensations that appear just before the urge to use. Despite evidence that these internal signals can shape craving and relapse, clinicians still lack reliable tools to measure or treat them. The ERC-funded BodyCrave project aims to track how shifts in heartbeat, stress, and internal awareness influence alcohol and tobacco use in controlled experiments and patients’ daily lives. By feeding this real-time data into therapy, the project will create personalised, interoception-based interventions that could make relapse less inevitable and treatment far more effective.
Objective
Despite extensive research and numerous therapeutic efforts, addiction remains a chronic condition for many individuals, with relapse rates alarmingly high. Traditional approaches predominantly emphasize cognitive and neural aspects of addiction, often overlooking the crucial interoceptive dimension, the perception of internal bodily states. Even though evidence suggests that physiological states contribute to the development and persistence of addiction, and patients report intense bodily sensations during craving episodes, we still lack tools to measure bodily processes associated with craving, understand their role in addiction risk, and effectively address them in therapy.
Through a transdiagnostic and multidisciplinary approach, I will address the interoceptive basis of craving. Work Package 1 involves experimental craving induction and self-administration procedures in non-clinical alcohol and tobacco users to establish how interoceptive processes influence the motivation to consume substances and contribute to escalation in substance use severity. Work Package 2 extends this research to real-world settings using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) in patients diagnosed with alcohol and tobacco use disorder. By integrating real-time data on craving, stress, and interoception into network analyses, I aim to identify interoceptive markers predictive of craving and relapse. Finally, a randomized controlled trial will test the effectiveness of incorporating individualized interoceptive feedback generated from EMA data into cognitive-behavioral therapy.
By focusing on the bodily dimension of craving and relief, this approach brings novel perspectives to the aetiology of addictive disorders and can yield breakthrough interoception-based treatments that can improve therapeutic efficacy and reduce relapse rates, addressing what it feels like to be in the body of someone suffering from addiction.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
You need to log in or register to use this function
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
See all projects funded under this callHost institution
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1348 LOUVAIN LA NEUVE
Belgium
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.