Brandi Fink | University of New Mexico School of Medicine (original) (raw)
Papers by Brandi Fink
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of alcohol... more OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of alcohol and evocative stimuli on heart rate variability (HRV) in partners with a history of intimate partner violence in a placebo-controlled alcohol administration study with an emotion-regulation task. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: In total, 17 partners (9 females, 8 males) with a history of partner violence participated in a placebo-controlled alcohol administration study with an emotion-regulation task during which HRV measures were collected. In the alcohol condition, participants were administered a mixture of 100 proof vodka and cranberry juice calculated to raise their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08%. In the placebo condition, participants consumed a volume of juice equivalent to that consumed in the alcohol condition, but without alcohol. Alcohol and placebo conditions were counter-balanced across participants as were the presentation the blocks of evocative and neutral partner ...
Journal of Family Violence
Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, 2019
In three experiments, match-to-sample procedures were used with undergraduates to establish arbit... more In three experiments, match-to-sample procedures were used with undergraduates to establish arbitrary relational functions for three abstract visual stimuli. In the presence of samples A, B, and C, participants were trained to select the smallest, middle, and largest member, respectively, of a series of threecomparison arrays. In Experiment 1, the B (choose middle) stimulus was then used to train a steady rate of keyboard pressing before the A (choose smallest) and the C (choose largest) stimuli were presented. Participants pressed slower to A and faster to C than to B. Then B was paired with mild shock in a Pavlovian procedure with skin conductance change as the dependent variable. When presented with A and C, 6 of 8 experimental participants showed smaller skin conductance changes to A and larger skin conductance changes to C than to B. In Experiment 2, A was then used as a sample in a match-to-sample procedure to establish an arbitrary size ranking among four same-sized colored c...
Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy
for over 20 years and established a AAMFT-approved supervision program there. Notably, she instit... more for over 20 years and established a AAMFT-approved supervision program there. Notably, she instituted the International Visitors' Program at IJR, which attracted visiting therapists from all over the world, to learn about family therapy. Through a scholarship from The Family Therapy Networker, the program expanded, enabling therapists from economically developing areas of the world to attend a 3-month family therapy training program. Professionals from the following nations attended these programs: Colombia,
OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of ... more OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics
Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids killed more than 17,000 Americans in 2017, marking... more Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids killed more than 17,000 Americans in 2017, marking a five-fold increase since 1999. High prescribing rates of opioid analgesics have been a substantial contributor to prescription opioid misuse, dependence, overdose and heroin use. There was recognition approximately ten years ago that opioid prescribing patterns were contributing to this startling increase in negative opioid-related outcomes, and federal actions, including Medicare reimbursement reform and regulatory actions, were initiated to restrict opioid prescribing. The current manuscript is a description of those actions, the effect of those actions on opioid prescribing and related patient outcomes. We also describe our proposal of methods of expanding these efforts as an important piece to further reduce opioid-related misuse, dependence, and overdose death.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Electroencephalographic (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) has been associated with differences ... more Electroencephalographic (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) has been associated with differences in the experience and expression of emotion, motivation and anger in normal and clinical populations. The current study is the first to investigate FAA in alcohol-related intimate partner violence. EEG was recorded from 23 distressed violent (DV) and 15 distressed nonviolent (DNV) partners during a placebo-controlled alcohol administration and emotion-regulation study. The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory 2 was used to evaluate anger experiences and was collected from both participants and their partners. During baseline, acute alcohol intoxication DV partners had significantly greater right FAA, whereas DNV partners showed greater left FAA. Both partner types demonstrated significantly greater right FAA during the placebo beverage condition of the emotion-regulation task when viewing evocative partner displays of contempt, belligerence, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling, b...
Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The current study is the first investigation of frontal alpha asymmetry... more OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The current study is the first investigation of frontal alpha asymmetry in distressed violent (DV) and distressed nonviolent (DNV) partners during a placebo-controlled alcohol administration and emotion-regulation study. Because this is the first study of the pharmacological effects of alcohol on FAA, the first portion of the study was conducted to characterize alcohol effects in DV and DNV partners during the baseline condition. The subsequent portions of the study were conducted to characterize the effects of alcohol and evocative stimuli on FAA in DV and DNV partners. We hypothesized that DV partners would demonstrated greater left frontal alpha asymmetry when intoxicated and viewing evocative partner stimuli than DNV partners. Lastly, we attempted to replicate previous research that has found associations between baseline measures of FAA and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory – 2 (Spielberger, 1999) subscales of Trait Anger, Anger Expression-Out...
Psychological Reports
The goal of the present research was to test the efficacy of the Bringing Baby Home couple-focuse... more The goal of the present research was to test the efficacy of the Bringing Baby Home couple-focused psychoeducational program for promoting father involvement and related satisfaction. A randomized clinical trial design was used to randomly assign 136 pregnant couples to either an intervention or control group. Father involvement post-intervention was assessed through self-report of engagement in parenting tasks. Intent-to-treat analysis of covariance analyses indicated that fathers who participated in the Bringing Baby Home program reported significantly more involvement in parenting tasks, satisfaction with the division of parenting labor, and feeling appreciated by their wives. Both husbands and wives were also more satisfied with the division of labor when fathers were more involved in parenting. Results suggest that couple-focused psychoeducational programs can be successful for promoting father involvement.
Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Most incidents of partner violence occur when one or both partners have... more OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Most incidents of partner violence occur when one or both partners have been drinking, however, the mechanism through which this association exists is unclear. The neural circuits that support self-regulation of emotion and social behavior, as well as autonomic influences on the heart, are co-localized in the brain and represent an integrated bidirectional regulatory system. These physiological regulatory processes are mediated by a neural substrate known as the central autonomic network which includes the peripheral autonomic nervous system. The central autonomic network modulates biobehavioral resources in emotion by flexibly responding to physiological arousal in response to changing situational demands, and serves a fundamental role in emotion regulation and goal-directed motor behavior, and this circuit can be indexed with heart rate variability (HRV). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: In total, 17 distressed violent (DV) partners (11 females, 6 males) were ma...
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly
Learning and Motivation, 2017
Social interactions form the basis of a broad range of functions related to survival and mating. ... more Social interactions form the basis of a broad range of functions related to survival and mating. The complexity of social behaviors and the flexibility required for normal social interactions make social behavior particularly susceptible to disruption. The consequences of developmental insults in the social domain and the associated neurobiological factors are commonly studied in rodents. Though methods for investigating social interactions in the laboratory are diverse, animals are typically placed together in an apparatus for a brief period (under 30 min) and allowed to interact freely while behavior is recorded for subsequent analysis. A standard approach to the analysis of social behavior involves quantification of the frequency and duration of individual social behaviors. This approach provides information about the allocation of time to particular behaviors within a session, which is typically sufficient for detection of robust alterations in behavior. Virtually all social species, however, display complex sequences of social behavior that are not captured in the quantification of individual behaviors. Sequences of behavior may provide more sensitive indicators of disruptions in social behavior. Sophisticated analysis systems for quantification of behavior sequences have been available for many years; however, the required training and time to complete these analyses represent significant barriers to high-throughput assessments. We present a simple approach to the quantification of behavioral sequences that requires minimal additional analytical steps after individual behaviors are coded. We implement this approach to identify altered social behavior in rats exposed to alcohol during prenatal development, and show that the frequency of several pairwise sequences of behavior discriminate controls from ethanol-exposed rats when the frequency of individual behaviors involved in those sequences does not. Thus, the approach described here may be useful in detecting subtle deficits in the social domain and identifying neural circuits involved in the organization of social behavior.
Depressive symptoms were examined in a sample of adjudicated adolescent males with conduct disord... more Depressive symptoms were examined in a sample of adjudicated adolescent males with conduct disorder and callous-unemotional behavior as measured by the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD) and the Youth Psychopathy Inventory (YPI). Results indicate that contrary to previous findings, depressive symptoms, as measured by the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale – 2 (RADS-2) are, indeed, present in callous-unemotional youth and significantly predict callous-unemotional behavior in this sample of male adolescents. In addition, dysphoria was negatively associated with callous-unemotional behavior whereas somatic complaints were positively associated with it. These findings suggest that the restricted affective displays in youth with callous-unemotional behavior may, in part, be related to a depressive process. In addition, somatic complaints were significantly related to impulsivity consistent with findings that depressive symptoms...
Behavior Research Methods, 2016
Videotaping of experimental sessions is a common practice across many disciplines of psychology, ... more Videotaping of experimental sessions is a common practice across many disciplines of psychology, ranging from clinical therapy, to developmental science, to animal research. Audio-visual data are a rich source of information that can be easily recorded; however, analysis of the recordings presents a major obstacle to project completion. Coding behavior is time-consuming and often requires ad-hoc training of a student coder. In addition, existing software is either prohibitively expensive or cumbersome, which leaves researchers with inadequate tools to quickly process video data. We offer the Simple Video Coder-free, open-source software for behavior coding that is flexible in accommodating different experimental designs, is intuitive for students to use, and produces outcome measures of event timing, frequency, and duration. Finally, the software also offers extraction tools to splice video into coded segments suitable for training future human coders or for use as input for pattern classification algorithms.
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of alcohol... more OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of alcohol and evocative stimuli on heart rate variability (HRV) in partners with a history of intimate partner violence in a placebo-controlled alcohol administration study with an emotion-regulation task. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: In total, 17 partners (9 females, 8 males) with a history of partner violence participated in a placebo-controlled alcohol administration study with an emotion-regulation task during which HRV measures were collected. In the alcohol condition, participants were administered a mixture of 100 proof vodka and cranberry juice calculated to raise their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08%. In the placebo condition, participants consumed a volume of juice equivalent to that consumed in the alcohol condition, but without alcohol. Alcohol and placebo conditions were counter-balanced across participants as were the presentation the blocks of evocative and neutral partner ...
Journal of Family Violence
Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, 2019
In three experiments, match-to-sample procedures were used with undergraduates to establish arbit... more In three experiments, match-to-sample procedures were used with undergraduates to establish arbitrary relational functions for three abstract visual stimuli. In the presence of samples A, B, and C, participants were trained to select the smallest, middle, and largest member, respectively, of a series of threecomparison arrays. In Experiment 1, the B (choose middle) stimulus was then used to train a steady rate of keyboard pressing before the A (choose smallest) and the C (choose largest) stimuli were presented. Participants pressed slower to A and faster to C than to B. Then B was paired with mild shock in a Pavlovian procedure with skin conductance change as the dependent variable. When presented with A and C, 6 of 8 experimental participants showed smaller skin conductance changes to A and larger skin conductance changes to C than to B. In Experiment 2, A was then used as a sample in a match-to-sample procedure to establish an arbitrary size ranking among four same-sized colored c...
Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy
for over 20 years and established a AAMFT-approved supervision program there. Notably, she instit... more for over 20 years and established a AAMFT-approved supervision program there. Notably, she instituted the International Visitors' Program at IJR, which attracted visiting therapists from all over the world, to learn about family therapy. Through a scholarship from The Family Therapy Networker, the program expanded, enabling therapists from economically developing areas of the world to attend a 3-month family therapy training program. Professionals from the following nations attended these programs: Colombia,
OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of ... more OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics
Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids killed more than 17,000 Americans in 2017, marking... more Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids killed more than 17,000 Americans in 2017, marking a five-fold increase since 1999. High prescribing rates of opioid analgesics have been a substantial contributor to prescription opioid misuse, dependence, overdose and heroin use. There was recognition approximately ten years ago that opioid prescribing patterns were contributing to this startling increase in negative opioid-related outcomes, and federal actions, including Medicare reimbursement reform and regulatory actions, were initiated to restrict opioid prescribing. The current manuscript is a description of those actions, the effect of those actions on opioid prescribing and related patient outcomes. We also describe our proposal of methods of expanding these efforts as an important piece to further reduce opioid-related misuse, dependence, and overdose death.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Electroencephalographic (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) has been associated with differences ... more Electroencephalographic (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) has been associated with differences in the experience and expression of emotion, motivation and anger in normal and clinical populations. The current study is the first to investigate FAA in alcohol-related intimate partner violence. EEG was recorded from 23 distressed violent (DV) and 15 distressed nonviolent (DNV) partners during a placebo-controlled alcohol administration and emotion-regulation study. The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory 2 was used to evaluate anger experiences and was collected from both participants and their partners. During baseline, acute alcohol intoxication DV partners had significantly greater right FAA, whereas DNV partners showed greater left FAA. Both partner types demonstrated significantly greater right FAA during the placebo beverage condition of the emotion-regulation task when viewing evocative partner displays of contempt, belligerence, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling, b...
Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The current study is the first investigation of frontal alpha asymmetry... more OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The current study is the first investigation of frontal alpha asymmetry in distressed violent (DV) and distressed nonviolent (DNV) partners during a placebo-controlled alcohol administration and emotion-regulation study. Because this is the first study of the pharmacological effects of alcohol on FAA, the first portion of the study was conducted to characterize alcohol effects in DV and DNV partners during the baseline condition. The subsequent portions of the study were conducted to characterize the effects of alcohol and evocative stimuli on FAA in DV and DNV partners. We hypothesized that DV partners would demonstrated greater left frontal alpha asymmetry when intoxicated and viewing evocative partner stimuli than DNV partners. Lastly, we attempted to replicate previous research that has found associations between baseline measures of FAA and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory – 2 (Spielberger, 1999) subscales of Trait Anger, Anger Expression-Out...
Psychological Reports
The goal of the present research was to test the efficacy of the Bringing Baby Home couple-focuse... more The goal of the present research was to test the efficacy of the Bringing Baby Home couple-focused psychoeducational program for promoting father involvement and related satisfaction. A randomized clinical trial design was used to randomly assign 136 pregnant couples to either an intervention or control group. Father involvement post-intervention was assessed through self-report of engagement in parenting tasks. Intent-to-treat analysis of covariance analyses indicated that fathers who participated in the Bringing Baby Home program reported significantly more involvement in parenting tasks, satisfaction with the division of parenting labor, and feeling appreciated by their wives. Both husbands and wives were also more satisfied with the division of labor when fathers were more involved in parenting. Results suggest that couple-focused psychoeducational programs can be successful for promoting father involvement.
Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Most incidents of partner violence occur when one or both partners have... more OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Most incidents of partner violence occur when one or both partners have been drinking, however, the mechanism through which this association exists is unclear. The neural circuits that support self-regulation of emotion and social behavior, as well as autonomic influences on the heart, are co-localized in the brain and represent an integrated bidirectional regulatory system. These physiological regulatory processes are mediated by a neural substrate known as the central autonomic network which includes the peripheral autonomic nervous system. The central autonomic network modulates biobehavioral resources in emotion by flexibly responding to physiological arousal in response to changing situational demands, and serves a fundamental role in emotion regulation and goal-directed motor behavior, and this circuit can be indexed with heart rate variability (HRV). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: In total, 17 distressed violent (DV) partners (11 females, 6 males) were ma...
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly
Learning and Motivation, 2017
Social interactions form the basis of a broad range of functions related to survival and mating. ... more Social interactions form the basis of a broad range of functions related to survival and mating. The complexity of social behaviors and the flexibility required for normal social interactions make social behavior particularly susceptible to disruption. The consequences of developmental insults in the social domain and the associated neurobiological factors are commonly studied in rodents. Though methods for investigating social interactions in the laboratory are diverse, animals are typically placed together in an apparatus for a brief period (under 30 min) and allowed to interact freely while behavior is recorded for subsequent analysis. A standard approach to the analysis of social behavior involves quantification of the frequency and duration of individual social behaviors. This approach provides information about the allocation of time to particular behaviors within a session, which is typically sufficient for detection of robust alterations in behavior. Virtually all social species, however, display complex sequences of social behavior that are not captured in the quantification of individual behaviors. Sequences of behavior may provide more sensitive indicators of disruptions in social behavior. Sophisticated analysis systems for quantification of behavior sequences have been available for many years; however, the required training and time to complete these analyses represent significant barriers to high-throughput assessments. We present a simple approach to the quantification of behavioral sequences that requires minimal additional analytical steps after individual behaviors are coded. We implement this approach to identify altered social behavior in rats exposed to alcohol during prenatal development, and show that the frequency of several pairwise sequences of behavior discriminate controls from ethanol-exposed rats when the frequency of individual behaviors involved in those sequences does not. Thus, the approach described here may be useful in detecting subtle deficits in the social domain and identifying neural circuits involved in the organization of social behavior.
Depressive symptoms were examined in a sample of adjudicated adolescent males with conduct disord... more Depressive symptoms were examined in a sample of adjudicated adolescent males with conduct disorder and callous-unemotional behavior as measured by the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD) and the Youth Psychopathy Inventory (YPI). Results indicate that contrary to previous findings, depressive symptoms, as measured by the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale – 2 (RADS-2) are, indeed, present in callous-unemotional youth and significantly predict callous-unemotional behavior in this sample of male adolescents. In addition, dysphoria was negatively associated with callous-unemotional behavior whereas somatic complaints were positively associated with it. These findings suggest that the restricted affective displays in youth with callous-unemotional behavior may, in part, be related to a depressive process. In addition, somatic complaints were significantly related to impulsivity consistent with findings that depressive symptoms...
Behavior Research Methods, 2016
Videotaping of experimental sessions is a common practice across many disciplines of psychology, ... more Videotaping of experimental sessions is a common practice across many disciplines of psychology, ranging from clinical therapy, to developmental science, to animal research. Audio-visual data are a rich source of information that can be easily recorded; however, analysis of the recordings presents a major obstacle to project completion. Coding behavior is time-consuming and often requires ad-hoc training of a student coder. In addition, existing software is either prohibitively expensive or cumbersome, which leaves researchers with inadequate tools to quickly process video data. We offer the Simple Video Coder-free, open-source software for behavior coding that is flexible in accommodating different experimental designs, is intuitive for students to use, and produces outcome measures of event timing, frequency, and duration. Finally, the software also offers extraction tools to splice video into coded segments suitable for training future human coders or for use as input for pattern classification algorithms.