Addiction Research Center (UMARC) |
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Major Research Themes The Substance Abuse Section's research efforts are carried on in the Addiction Research Center and are focused in six major thematic areas that range from molecular genetics and computational neuroscience. Basic science to treatment research in clinical settings. Within these six areas, a number of projects, both full scale, and at the pilot level, are ongoing. Each of the research themes is briefly described below, and a list of faculty and senior research staff involved is presented. 1. Developmental Psychopathology
and Genetics: including studies on the identification of genetic,
neuropsychological, and psychosocial factors that contribute to
alcoholism and other drug abuse across different segments
of the life span.
2. Brain function and Neurophysiology:
this program of research is carried out in collaboration with investigators from the UM
Molecular and Behavioral Neurosciences Institute and the University's
Functional MRI Laboratory, current studies are looking at the relationships
of brain activation patterns to genetic risk and prior behavioral risk, relationships
to neurocognitive functioning, and to substance use and abuse outcomes,
and for nicotine, alcohol, and illicit drugs. 3. Treatment: involving course
predictors, effectiveness, and medication development studies; these
studies target patients with substance use disorders, tracking their
course of illness during and following treatment interventions;
they include naturalistic treatment outcome studies to identify
biological, psychosocial, cultural, spiritual and ethnic factors that influence
or protect against subsequent use and relapse; Biological factors
of particular interest include genetic markers of the GABA and serotonin
systems, and sleep physiology; 4. Health Services Research:
involving research on the health services outcomes of treatment,
and documentation of differences in clinical manifestations and
course of different population subgroups; 5. Prevention and Early Intervention:
involving the conduct of field trials to evaluate the effectiveness
of screening and brief intervention protocols for adolescents and
young adults, and studies of the effectiveness of family based interventions
as a vehicle for risk reduction in younger children at high risk
for the development of substance abuse disorders; 6. Sleep, Sleep Problems, Chronobiology and
Substance Use Disorder: involving studies of the effects of
sleep problems on course of alcoholism, long term effectiveness
of treatment, and relapse, and the role of sleep distubances in
the etiology of substance use disorders, the characteristics of chronobiological
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Substance
Abuse
Section
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