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In the last decade, the national opioid epidemic has yielded a 131% increase in pregnant women diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD), which is characterized by opioid abuse and dependence. Pharmacological treatments for OUD commonly involve methadone, a synthetic opioid analgesic that attenuates withdrawal symptoms. The ability to readily enter fetal circulation, accumulate in neural tissue, and cause long‐term neurocognitive sequelae, has led to concerns regarding the drug’s effect on fetal brain development. Since little is known about the impact of methadone on human fetal brain development, we took advantage of the in vitro induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)‐derived human cortical organoid (hCO) technology to probe its effects on the earliest developmental stages. Our lab has demonstrated that 1‐week of chronic exposure to a clinically relevant 1μM dose of methadone leads to the …