10-year Capstone Conference<\/a>, which brings together neuro researchers from across the country to celebrate NIH-funded behavior change research over the last decade. Feldstein Ewing is one of just three researchers presenting empirical evidence studies at the virtual conference on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cBeing asked to present at the Capstone Conference is the best thing I could hope for. It\u2019s a really big deal,\u201d Feldstein Ewing said. \u201cThere are not a lot of people who bring together two different areas of study \u2014 behavioral neuroscience with behavioral treatment. These are the most cutting edge people in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feldstein Ewing\u2019s own cutting-edge study looks at the neural response of the adolescent brain to determine which areas of the brain are activated in the course of behavioral treatment sessions. In her most recent study, adolescents are placed in a MRI scanner before and after they receive one of two behavioral treatments \u2014 \u201cmindfulness\u201d and \u201cmotivational Interviewing.\u201d Feldstein Ewing plays back therapists\u2019 statements from the sessions to see what parts of the brain blood flows to, which is a marker of which areas of the brain are activating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen you look at something, blood flows to the part of the brain that helps you see that. If you see someone familiar, blood flows to the part of the brain that recognizes faces,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen we play back therapists\u2019 language, we can see what parts are activating for kids, and that tells us which treatments are meaningful and which are not. When we examine which part of the brain lights up, we can figure out how to make treatment better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feldstein Ewing began her study \u2014 funded by a $1.8 million, five-year grant from NIH \u2014 at Oregon Health & Science University and brings this and her other NIH-funded work to URI, where she began in the fall 2020 semester. She is now establishing relationships with researchers at Brown University to continue her work with MRIs to see what parts of the brain adolescents are using in a new developmental neuroscience-informed behavioral therapy that she has developed from her past 15 years of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKids and adults\u2019 brains respond in totally different ways. Adults mostly have responses in areas of reward \u2013 when you get that reward, your feelings of craving are satiated,\u201d she said. \u201cFor adults it\u2019s more that they can\u2019t help it; they have these powerful cravings. With kids, it\u2019s not that they\u2019re trying to satisfy cravings. They\u2019re using because they went to a party and there was weed there, or they were hanging out with friends and drinking because that\u2019s what was available. It\u2019s more of an exploratory, experimental use rather than this chronic urge to use. Adolescents are still very much figuring out who they are and who they want to be. Thinking about changing their behavior is more in that domain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Focusing on the developmental neuroscience of the brain is likely to improve treatments in adolescents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTreatments have really been developed for these chronic urge-to-use adult users, and not these adolescent experimenters who made terrible choices but were really more contained early in their trajectory,\u201d Feldstein Ewing said. \u201cSo these treatments were not working at all for these kids. Adults already don\u2019t respond all that well to existing behavioral treatments, and in kids, these treatments are about half as effective. So I thought what are we missing? Why are we not using what we know about the brain to help make these treatments better?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal is to use adolescents\u2019 own instincts to influence behavior change, which Feldstein Ewing plans to explore further in a subsequent study. Adolescent brains are much more adaptable, allowing teenagers to more easily change their behavior to fit in with their friends than adults. Tapping into those skills, Feldstein Ewing plans to create self-reflection areas for adolescents where they can focus on behaviors they need to change. By scanning their brains before and after such a therapy session, she can determine whether the interventions are stimulating the parts of the brain needed to affect change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey are really flexible and much better at critiquing behavior or critiquing a hypothesis. The whole intervention is trying to figure out how to bolster those instincts,\u201d Feldstein Ewing said. \u201cYou can really organize kids around social justice causes, for example, so we are trying to channel that same fight-it-out energy to help them use that for behavior change. It is an instinct they already have in them, so we\u2019re attempting to play to their greater strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sarah Feldstein Ewing, who holds the Prochaska Professorship in Population Health, presents groundbreaking study at NIH Capstone Conference Adolescent brains are developmentally distinct from adults, resulting in different reasons for engaging in risky behavior like substance abuse, which makes it di\ufb03cult for clinicians to know how to approach addiction treatment with younger patients. While they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":8993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8990"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9228,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990\/revisions\/9228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}