Judson Brewer, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

Mentors

Marc N. Potenza, MD PhD; Rajita Sinha, PhD; Kathleen M. Carroll, PhD; Bruce J. Rounsaville, MD

Background

Dr. Brewer is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry.  He received his Ph.D. and his medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine.  He did his residency in adult Psychiatry at Yale University and was Chief Resident in 2007.  His long-term career goal is to establish himself as an independent investigator and teacher on the psychiatric faculty at an academic medical institution.

Project Summary

Dr. Brewer’s project, Mindfulness Training as Treatment and Mechanistic Probe for Addiction, hypothesizes that mindfulness training (MT) will yield superior results compared to standard relapse prevention in four outcome areas: a) reduced stress-induced craving, b) reduced stress-induced physiologic reactivity c) normalized brain activation (increased prefrontal and decreased striatal activation) and d) reduced relapse to cocaine use.  After treatment, psychological, physiological, and brain activation responses to personalized stress imagery will be measured in a laboratory paradigm by drug craving and anxiety self-report measures, heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, and fMRI. Relapse rates will be measured by number of days of reported cocaine and other drug use, urine toxicology, and time to first relapse to cocaine use.