Yasmin Hurd, a neurobiologist who studies addiction, in her office at the Addiction Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

This scientist is testing a marijuana ingredient as a way to prevent relapse. It’s a daunting task

NEW YORK — When she started collecting brains, neuroscientist Yasmin Hurd’s peers wondered what she could possibly be thinking.

Studying animals made way more sense as a way to trace how chronic drug use changes the brain, they thought — after all, how was Hurd going to parse the long-term effects from the trauma of the overdoses that killed the brain donors?