Do improvements in motivational language predict alcohol use in motivational interviewing? Ambivalence matters.

Objective: Motivational Interviewing (MI) is described as a method for improving clinical outcomes by reducing client ambivalence. If this is true, MI's focus on improving clients' motivational language should be most useful for clients with ambivalence about change and less valuable for those who are ready to implement new behaviors or are opposed to change. To address this hypothesis and potentially add precision to MI delivery in clinical settings, we tested whether the relationship between clients' in-session motivational language and posttreatment alcohol use depended on their baseline motivation to change.

Understanding effects of the group process on drinking outcomes for emerging adults experiencing homelessness.

Background: There is little research on group process for motivational interviewing-based group interventions with young people. We examine how change talk, group climate and cohesion, and facilitator empathy among emerging adults experiencing homelessness affect their drinking outcomes.

Methods: Data come from a clinical trial at three drop-in centers serving emerging adults experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County and focus on those who received the intervention (n = 132).

Addictions treatment mechanisms of change science and implementation science: A critical review.

This manuscript aims to contribute to the next phase of mechanisms of behavior change (MOBC) science on alcohol or other drug use. Specifically, we encourage the transition from a basic science orientation (i.e.

What can clients tell us about whether to use motivational interviewing? An analysis of early-session ambivalent language.

Background: Although motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective method for promoting change in problematic alcohol and other drug use, it does not benefit all clients. Clinicians have little empirical guidance on who is likely to benefit from MI and who is not. We hypothesized that differences in clients' spontaneously offered language early in the session would predict their responsiveness to MI during the remainder of the session.

Can a pure motivational interviewing intervention be manualized and still efficacious? A test of feasibility and initial efficacy.

The importance of attending to the therapeutic process despite the challenges in manualizing it is demonstrated in the empirical evolution of motivational interviewing (MI). Whereas manuals exist for adaptations of MI, no manual has been developed and tested for MI in its pure form (pure MI). This study evaluated the feasibility and initial efficacy of a pure MI intervention manual - MI for risky social drinking (MI-RSD) - designed to target risky social drinking behaviors in college students with social anxiety.

Inside Alcohol Behavioral Couple Therapy (ABCT): In-session speech trajectories and drinking outcomes.

The alcohol treatment literature has established in-session client speech as a mechanism of change that therapist behavior can influence and that can predict drinking outcomes. This study aimed to explore temporal patterns of in-session speech in Alcohol Behavioral Couple Therapy (ABCT), including the unique interplay between client and partner speech and the role of speech trajectories in predicting client drinking outcomes. Participants were 165 heterosexual couples receiving ABCT in one of four clinical trials.

A comparison of automated and manual co-registration for magnetoencephalography.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a neuroimaging technique that accurately captures the rapid (sub-millisecond) activity of neuronal populations. Interpretation of functional data from MEG relies upon registration to the participant's anatomical MRI. The key remaining step is to transform the participant's MRI into the MEG head coordinate space.

Discordant Alpha-Band Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Affects Cortico-Cortical and Cortico-Cerebellar Connectivity.

Synchronization of oscillatory brain activity is believed to play a critical role in linking distributed neuronal populations into transient functional networks. Alpha-band alternating current stimulation (tACS) was applied over bilateral parietal cortex in a double-blind sham-controlled study to test the notion that widespread alpha mediates causal relationships in the gamma-band both within local neuronal populations and also across distant brain regions. Causal relationships of oscillatory alpha- and gamma-band activity were characterized during performance of a visual global/local attention task.

Dynamic Functional Network Connectivity in Schizophrenia with Magnetoencephalography and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Do Different Timescales Tell a Different Story?

The importance of how brain networks function together to create brain states has become increasingly recognized. Therefore, an investigation of eyes-open resting-state dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) of healthy controls (HC) versus that of schizophrenia patients (SP) via both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a novel magnetoencephalography (MEG) pipeline was completed. The fMRI analysis used a spatial independent component analysis (ICA) to determine the networks on which the dFNC was based.

Examining the influence of active ingredients of motivational interviewing on client change talk.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an evidenced-based intervention designed to help clients explore and resolve ambivalence around substance use. MI combines a humanistic tradition with behavioral components to facilitate client decisions concerning behavior change. As such, there is marked interest in the relationship between the two active ingredients of MI - the relational, or person-centered, components and the technical, or directional, behavioral components - on client in-session language.

Short- and Long-Term Effects of Within-Session Client Speech on Drinking Outcomes in the COMBINE Study.

Objective: There is evidence of a causal chain in motivational interviewing (MI) involving counselor MI-consistent skills, client change language, and outcomes. MI was a key component of the combined behavioral intervention in the Combined Pharmacotherapies and Behavioral Interventions for Alcohol Dependence (COMBINE) Study. Participants in COMBINE were treatment-seeking and medication-seeking, and were required to maintain a period of abstinence before enrollment.

The language of change among criminal justice clients: Counselor language, client language, and client substance use outcomes.

Objective: Counselor and client language have been identified as mechanisms of change in motivational interviewing (MI) counseling sessions. This study evaluated whether language patterns exhibited during MI sessions with substance users in the community would also be found during MI sessions with substance users in the criminal justice system.

Method: Forty audio recordings of MI sessions with substance-using probationers were coded and analyzed sequentially using the Motivational Interviewing Skills Code (MISC) 2.

Working memory capacity and addiction treatment outcomes in adolescents.

Background: Brief addiction treatments including motivational interviewing (MI) have shown promise with adolescents, but the factors that influence treatment efficacy in this population remain unknown. One candidate is working memory, the ability to hold a fact or thought in mind. This is relevant, as in therapy, a client must maintain and manipulate ideas while working with a clinician.

Group motivational interviewing for homeless young adults: Associations of change talk with substance use and sexual risk behavior.

Homeless young adults exhibit high rates of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and sexual risk behaviors. This study is a secondary analysis of data collected in a randomized clinical trial of AWARE, a new 4 session group motivational interviewing intervention. AWARE mainly focused on alcohol use and sexual risk behavior given focus group feedback.

Neuropsychological analysis of auditory verbal hallucinations.

Recent neuropsychological studies have distinguished deficits in verbal working memory, verbal memory, and confrontation naming from other neuropsychological domains as specifically related to the severity of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in schizophrenia (Gisselgard et al., 2014; Siddi et al., 2017).

A randomized controlled trial to influence client language in substance use disorder treatment.

Background: Client language is hypothesized to be a mechanism of action in motivational interviewing (MI). Despite the association of change and sustain talk with substance treatment outcomes, it not known whether providers can intentionally influence this language as hypothesized.

Objective: This is a randomized controlled trial to investigate whether substance use providers can be trained to influence client language.

Diminished auditory sensory gating during active auditory verbal hallucinations.

Auditory sensory gating, assessed in a paired-click paradigm, indicates the extent to which incoming stimuli are filtered, or "gated", in auditory cortex. Gating is typically computed as the ratio of the peak amplitude of the event related potential (ERP) to a second click (S2) divided by the peak amplitude of the ERP to a first click (S1). Higher gating ratios are purportedly indicative of incomplete suppression of S2 and considered to represent sensory processing dysfunction.

Multimodal Classification of Schizophrenia Patients with MEG and fMRI Data Using Static and Dynamic Connectivity Measures.

Mental disorders like schizophrenia are currently diagnosed by physicians/psychiatrists through clinical assessment and their evaluation of patient's self-reported experiences as the illness emerges. There is great interest in identifying biological markers of prognosis at the onset of illness, rather than relying on the evolution of symptoms across time. Functional network connectivity, which indicates a subject's overall level of "synchronicity" of activity between brain regions, demonstrates promise in providing individual subject predictive power.

Magnetoencephalographic and functional MRI connectomics in schizophrenia via intra- and inter-network connectivity.

Examination of intrinsic functional connectivity using functional MRI (fMRI) has provided important findings regarding dysconnectivity in schizophrenia. Extending these results using a complementary neuroimaging modality, magnetoencephalography (MEG), we present the first direct comparison of functional connectivity between schizophrenia patients and controls, using these two modalities combined. We developed a novel MEG approach for estimation of networks using MEG that incorporates spatial independent component analysis (ICA) and pairwise correlations between independent component timecourses, to estimate intra- and intern-network connectivity.

Functional MRI Evaluation of Multiple Neural Networks Underlying Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders.

Functional MRI studies have identified a distributed set of brain activations to be associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH). However, very little is known about how activated brain regions may be linked together into AVH-generating networks. Fifteen volunteers with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder pressed buttons to indicate onset and offset of AVH during fMRI scanning.

The Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity Code (MITI 4): Rationale, Preliminary Reliability and Validity.

Unlabelled: The Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity code has been revised to address new evidence-based elements of motivational interviewing (MI). This new version (MITI 4) includes new global ratings to assess clinician's attention to client language, increased rigor in assessing autonomy support and client choice, and items to evaluate the use of persuasion when giving information and advice.

Method: Four undergraduate, non-professional raters were trained in the MITI and used it to review 50 audiotapes of clinicians conducting MI in actual treatments sessions.

Therapist empathy, combined behavioral intervention, and alcohol outcomes in the COMBINE research project.

Objective: Common factors such as therapist empathy play an important role in treatment for addictive behaviors. The present study was a secondary analysis designed to evaluate the relation between therapist empathy and alcohol treatment outcomes in data from a large, multisite, randomized controlled trial.

Method: Audio-recorded psychotherapy sessions for 38 therapists and 700 clients had been randomly selected for fidelity coding from the combined behavioral intervention condition of Project COMBINE.

Multimodal based classification of schizophrenia patients.

Schizophrenia is currently diagnosed by physicians through clinical assessment and their evaluation of patient's self-reported experiences over the longitudinal course of the illness. There is great interest in identifying biologically based markers at the onset of illness, rather than relying on the evolution of symptoms across time. Functional network connectivity shows promise in providing individual subject predictive power.