Monday, June 11, 2012

Reinout Wiers, University of Amsterdam June 22

Please join us for a talk by Reinout Wiers (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Amsterdam) on Friday, June 22nd from 12:00-1:15 pm in Room 1111 Tolman. Prof. Wiers will address Adolescence, Addiction, and Implicit Processes: The Integration of Control and Motivation. This is the first in a series of IHD activities this year that will focus on the development of motivational processes.

ABSTRACT
Adolescence, Addiction, and Implicit Processes: The Integration of Control and Motivation
The likelihood of initiating addictive behaviors is higher during adolescence than during any other developmental period. This presentation will focus on growing evidence for the importance of implicit processes(within a dual process model) in the development of substance use disorders, and will describe promising new approaches to behavioral interventions for addiction in adolescents based on this model. The differential developmental trajectories of brain regions involved in motivation and control processes may lead to adolescents’ increased risk taking in general, which may be exacerbated by the neural consequences of drug use. Neuroimaging studies suggest that increased risk-taking behavior in adolescence is related to an imbalance between prefrontal cortical regions, associated with executive functions, and subcortical brain regions related to affect and motivation. Dual-process models of addictive behaviors are similarly concerned with difficulties in controlling abnormally strong motivational processes. Insights in the development of control and motivation may help to better understand—and more effectively intervene in—a broad range of adolescence vulnerabilities involving control and motivation relevant to a wide array of adolescent health outcomes.