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Targeting Trauma-Related Disorders with Arts and Movement Therapies
1 in 5 youth experience trauma, and 70-90% of adults experience trauma over the life course. In the aftermath of trauma, individuals may experience PTSD, anxiety, depression, and somatic symptoms as well as require stress coping skills and ways to build resilience. This research program brings creative arts and movement-based interventions to school-aged youth as well as families resettled as refugees of the Middle East and Africa.
In collaboration with Samaritas Resettlement Agency, Oakland Schools, Hype Recreation Center, ACCESS, and the Arab American National Museum, we have brought kinesthetically informed art therapy, dance/movement therapy, and trauma-informed yoga to our communities throughout Southeast Michigan. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have shifted programming online and expanded our reach through schools.
Funded by the Detroit Medical Center and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, we have also been able to research the efficacy and underlying neurobiological mechanisms of these interventions to advocate for greater usage of these creative arts and movement-based interventions in the community.
Cognitive Context In Fear Conditioning And Extinction Learning
How does personal interpretation and understanding of a traumatic experience (cognitive context of trauma), affect the way people are differently traumatized by an event? Also, how does therapy, by creating a different meaning for such experiences help change the brain? Finally, are there aberrations in conditions such as PTSD or anxiety, that impair such cognitive learning?
In this fear conditioning fMRI study, we examine the neurocircuitry underlying learning of fear and safety as an effect of instruction and experience.
This model is a step up from animal laboratory models of trauma and exposure therapy (which are mainly based on experiential learning of safety and fear), and the reality of trauma in humans and therapy where there is always a cognitive contextual component present. We have established the neurocircuitry of instructed safety learning in healthy participants. In the next step, we will look at how instructed and experiential learning of fear and safety may be different across healthy participants, and people with generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD.
This model is a step up from animal laboratory models of trauma and exposure therapy (which are mainly based on experiential learning of safety and fear), and the reality of trauma in humans and therapy where there is always a cognitive contextual component present. We have established the neurocircuitry of instructed safety learning in healthy participants. In the next step, we will look at how instructed and experiential learning of fear and safety may be different across healthy participants, and people with generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD.
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