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Mechanisms of Behavioral Change and Effective Treatment Interventions to Improve Addiction Recovery Outcomes

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In "The Contributions of Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging to Understanding Mechanisms of Behavior Change in Addiction," Morgenstern, Naqvi, Debellis & Breiter (2013) examine the mechanisms of behavioral change and effective treatment interventions to improve addiction recovery outcomes. Unnecessarily creating an acronym out of the phrase mechanisms of behavioral change, the authors claim a recent "upsurge of interest" in understanding how behavioral change takes place from a cognitive-behavioral perspective. In particular, psychosocial treatments have been used to address addiction problems. The authors build the research on the assumption that there are limitations in the prevailing models of addiction, which are preventing behavioral interventions from being effective. The authors hypothesize that cognitive neuroscience can fill in gaps in the literature on addiction treatment and intervention efficacy. Cognitive neuroscience models of addiction may offer "alternative conceptual and methodological approaches" to studying the "psychological processes" that characterize addiction (p. 1). This is not an experimental design, but merely an exploratory paper that critiques current addiction models and the psycho-social treatment interventions used to treat addiction. The authors review literature and neuroimaging reports to suggest future research on addiction processes and potential interventions.
The study, published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors,

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