Neural Mechanisms of a Parent-Focused Mindfulness Intervention to Prevent Adolescent Substance Use

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Project Summary NIDA has called for the development of prevention programs developmentally-tailored to enhance protective factors and reduce risk factors for youth substance use initiation based on empirical findings. Family factors—such as parental stress, the parent-adolescent bond, and caregiving behaviors—are highly related to substance use initiation in adolescence. Thus, parenting and the family environment are critical targets for adolescent substance use prevention. Emerging studies have shown parenting interventions involving mindfulness training can reduce parent stress, improve parenting behaviors, increase family bonding, and may affect adolescent substance use. Despite the promise of such interventions, little is known about the mechanisms underlying parent-focused mindfulness interventions—knowledge which is key to refine and maximize intervention effects. Notably, the benefits of mindfulness training are considered to function largely in part through changes in neural function, particularly in emotion-related brain regions. Thus, the proposed study will investigate emotion-related neural mechanisms of a parent-focused mindfulness intervention via fMRI, with the long-term goal of identifying key mechanisms of parent-focused interventions aimed to prevent youth substance use. To that end, the specific aims are threefold. First, using a pre/post intervention design of an 8- session parent-focused mindfulness intervention and 3-session parent education control, the proposed study will examine changes in parents' neural activation to negative emotional stimuli using fMRI. Second, parents' neural functional connectivity will be evaluated at pre- and post-intervention using a priori and advanced data- driven analyses. Third, the proposed study will uniquely examine associations between parent neural function and parent stress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent substance use behaviors concurrently at post- intervention and longitudinally at 6-month and 1-year follow-up time points. By evaluating emotion-related neural mechanisms using fMRI, the proposed study will contribute to the empirical knowledge of mindfulness intervention effects and of neural changes associated with parent-focused mindfulness training. Such understanding will help inform the development, refinement, and effective implementation of parent-focused interventions targeted to prevent and reduce the risk of youth substance use. The goals of the proposed study will be accomplished within a research training plan aimed at developing multidisciplinary expertise in affective neuroscience, intervention science, and developmental models of substance use. The training plan includes completion of relevant coursework; attendance at targeted workshops; individual mentorship by experts in the field of intervention, developmental, and neuroscience; and scientific writing and presentation experience.