Researchers at CASAA Awarded $400,000 Grant from NIH

Grant to study mechanisms of behavior change in addiction treatment using magnetoencephalography

Researchers at UNM’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions (CASAA) have been awarded a $400,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study mechanisms of behavior change in addiction treatment using a state-of-the-art neuroimaging technique known as magnetoencephalography (MEG).

The study is focused on an empirically-supported treatment, motivational interviewing, that was developed by Dr. William Miller, an emeritus professor at UNM. Over the next two years the project will explore the neural underpinnings of client motivation and speech from treatment sessions.

“To our knowledge, this is the first federally-funded study of its kind,” said co-investigator Jon Houck of UNM CASAA.

The research team also includes the expertise of Dr. Theresa Moyers of UNM CASAA and the Department of Psychology, who has an extensive publication record exploring therapeutic processes in motivational interviewing, and Dr. Claudia Tesche of UNM’s Departments of Psychology and Neurosciences, who contributed to the development of the first whole-head MEG array and has nearly two decades of experience using MEG to measure human cognition.

Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu