One of the major challenges of addiction research is to identify vulnerable individuals before they develop addictive disorders. Indeed, only a small subset of users (20-30%) develop pathological behaviors such as loss of control over drug use and compulsive seeking/consumption of the substance despite the negative consequences. In rats, pathological low frequency oscillations in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) can predict compulsive-like cocaine seeking. However, the deep location of this predictive biomarker, requiring invasive electrode implantation, prevents its potential use in humans. Thus, we asked whether this pathological activity could be recorded at more superficial levels. For this, we recorded local field potentials in the STN and cortical activity via electrocorticography (ECOG), in prefrontal and motor cortex, and the cerebellum, during an escalation procedure, in which rats lose control over their intake. Cocaine compulsive-like seeking behavior was then assessed in the resistance to punishment test, in which cocaine seeking was randomly punished with a mild electrical shock on the paws, allowing the identification of compulsive-like individuals. Our data indicate that future "addict" rats display a pathological increase in both STN and prefrontal theta-band during cocaine escalation. Smaller changes were also detected in motor and cerebellum areas. These data strongly suggest that prefrontal and subthalamic oscillatory activity play a key role in the emergence of compulsive-like seeking. Such predictive superficial biomarker could be of use in humans to detect vulnerable individuals before they transition to addiction, and thereby improve the management and prevention of addiction.