June 26, 2018 | Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD Presents: Emotions inside out: From cartoon neuroscience to the predictive brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is University Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory (IASLab) at Northeastern University, with research appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research focuses on the nature of emotion from both psychological and neuroscience perspectives. Dr. Barrett is the recipient of numerous research awards, including the 2018 APS Lifetime Mentor Award and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for transformative research. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science, as well as several other scientific societies. Her research has been continuously funded by NIH and NSF for 20 years. Dr. Barrett also educates lawyers, judges and other legal actors about emotion, neuroscience and the law as part of her work for the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior. In addition to publishing over 200 peer reviewed papers and 50 book chapters, Dr. Barrett has testified before US Congress in support of basic behavioral research funding and has edited five volumes, including the 4th edition of the Handbook of Emotion, published by Guilford Press. Her book, How emotions are made:  The secret life of the brain, is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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SOBC Spotlight: Interview with Amy Slep, PhD and Richard Heyman, PhD

In this Spotlight feature we focus of Amy Slep, PhD and Richard Heyman, PhD, Clinical Psychologists and Professors in the College of Dentistry at New York University. They co-direct the Family Translational Research Group. Their SOBC research examines patterns of coercive processes within parent-child and couple dyads. These coercive processes, if engaged frequently, are believed to lead to poor consequences for health behaviors such as tooth brushing, eating, and drinking.
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May 15, 2018 | OBSSR Director’s Webinar Presents: Linda K. Larkey, Ph.D., CRTT on Biopsychosocial effects of Meditative Movement (Qigong/Tai Chi) on breast cancer survivor’s fatigue and other symptoms.

Time: 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (ET)

Register: Register for this online only event.

 

Linda K. Larkey, Ph.D., CRTT, has a notable funded research record in multiple intervention approaches to promote cancer screenings in multiple clinic and community settings. Her more recently NIH-funded projects explore the biopsychosocial effects of Tai Chi Easy/Qigong on breast cancer survivor’s fatigue, cognitive function and other symptoms. Biomarker assessments include cortisol, inflammatory cytokines complemented with self-report and objective performance and cognitive function measures. Dr. Larkey’s more recent and current work nicely models OBSSR-desired grantspersonship and researcher behavior. Larkey is professor in Arizona State University’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation and adjunct faculty with Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ. Dr. Larkey will review the broader evidence (from her own work and others’) on Meditative Movement (MM) effects on cancer survivorship, supporting the goals of her research underway in breast cancer survivors. Extended models proposing various biomolecular and neurophysiological markers as mechanisms of effects on physical and emotional symptoms, cognitive function and body composition outcomes will be discussed.

 

 

New NIH Adherence FOAs published

These new funding opportunities on Adherence direct people to SOBC resources and encourage their use:

Improving Patient Adherence to Treatment and Prevention Regimens to Promote Health

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-18-722.html  –  R01

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-18-723.html  – R21

 

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is being issued by the NIH Adherence Network through the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) with participation from multiple NIH Institutes and Centers. This FOA calls for research grant applications which address patient adherence to treatment and prevention regimens in healthcare to promote health outcomes. This FOA accepts applications that either propose or do not propose a clinical trial(s).

Applications under this FOA are encouraged, but not required, to apply approaches and tools developed under the NIH Common Fund’s Science of Behavior Change (SOBC) Program. These include: use-inspired basic research on mechanisms of change at multiple levels of analysis; assays for self-regulation, interpersonal processes and stress that have evidence as malleable targets for behavior change (see https://osf.io/zp7b4) developed under the SOBC program; and an experimental medicine approach which requires a clear a priori specification of the intended mechanistic target(s) of an intervention, and methods that test the degree to which an experimental manipulation or intervention engages those targets.

For more information about the SOBC program, please see: https://commonfund.nih.gov/behaviorchange.

 

April 23rd, 2018 | Alia Crum, PhD Presents: Nudging Mindset: Improving Health and Motivating Healthy Behaviors

Dr. Alia Crum is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.  She received her PhD from Yale University and BA degree from Harvard University.  Dr. Crum’s research focuses on how changes in subjective mindsets—the lenses through which information is perceived, organized, and interpreted—can alter objective reality through behavioral, psychological, and physiological mechanisms.  Her work is, in part, inspired by research on the placebo effect, a robust demonstration of the ability of the mindset to elicit healing properties in the body.  She is interested in understanding how mindsets affect important outcomes outside the realm of medicine, in domains such as exercise, diet and stress.  More specifically, Dr. Crum aims to understand how mindsets can be consciously and deliberately changed through intervention to affect physiological and psychological well-beings.  To date, her research has won several awards including the NIH New Innovator Award and the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize.  In addition to her academic research and teaching, Dr. Crum has worked as a clinical psychologist for the VA healthcare system and an organizational trainer and consultant, creating, delivering, and evaluating workshops on mindset change and stress management for organizations including UBS, Colgate Palmolive and the United States Navy.