Browsing by Subject "Neuroscience"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Family Meeting: Helping Family Members Solve the Puzzle of Addiction(2016-12) Dolan, Andrew; Pointer, Amy; University of Baltimore. College of Arts and Sciences; Master of Fine Arts in Integrated DesignWhile family members share the misery of living with an addict, many have an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the causes of addiction, or how to mitigate its deleterious effects on family interaction, in order to help the addict on the path to recovery. Governments around the world have published a wealth of information about many aspects of addiction science, but the magnitude of the data is such that families looking for actionable information may feel overwhelmed and consequently may be unable to find the tools that they need. For-profit treatment centers publish materials that present information in more digestible formats, but the information tends to be skewed toward the treatment approach of the particular facility and profit motivations are often disguised to appear purely informational. As a result, many families attempt to deal with the numerous difficult facets of addiction while not understanding several crucial points: that addiction is a brain-based disease, that addicts’ actions are consequently driven by physiological factors, and that addicts regularly manipulate family sensibilities to feed their dependencies. Family Meeting is a website based on these basic tenets that serves as a safe, unaffiliated community for family members of addicts to share resources, experiences and information to help their addicted loved ones. Its featured video, Understanding Addiction: A Guide for Family Members, encapsulates these concepts in an easily-understood format.Item Neural Correlates of the Relationship between Optimism and Pain Perception in a Conditioned Pain Modulation Paradigm(2018-01-01) Hinkle, Caroline Elizabeth; Quiton, Raimi L; Psychology; PsychologyIntroduction: Pain is a pervasive public health problem in the United States. Despite its prevalence, the variables influencing pain processing remain poorly understood. It is now accepted that psychological factors such as optimism have the potential to influence both clinical and experimental pain outcomes. It has been suggested that people in high in optimism may modulate pain more effectively. However, the neural mechanisms of this relationship have not been explored. Method: Participants underwent psychophysical testing using a conditioned pain modulation (CPM) paradigm, a common measure of endogenous pain modulation. Participants rated a series of painful heat test stimuli alone and then again in the presence of a painful pressure conditioning stimulus.Participants typically rate the test stimuli as less painful in the presence of the conditioning stimulus, a phenomenon known as "pain inhibits pain” or CPM. Participants repeated the CPM paradigm in a separate session during a functional MRI scan. A measure of dispositional optimism was administered before the scan. Results: Imaging results showed that greater dispositional optimism was associated with increased heat-pain related brain activity in areas involved in sensory pain processing, including the somatosensory cortex, superior parietal lobe, and posterior insula. Optimism was also positively associated with activity in sensory brain areas during CPM stimulation, including in the superior parietal lobe, somatosensory cortex, and supramarginal gyrus. Additionally, during CPM stimulation, optimism was negatively associated with activity in brain areas implicated in gating attention to pain, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Conclusion: Optimism may modulate differences in pain perception via attention and sensory awareness, whereby greater attention to painful stimuli causes increased perception of pain intensity.