Multidisciplinary investigation of driving while impaired (DWI): Putative neurobiological and neurocognitive mechanisms of recidivism and remediation

Thomas G. Brown is Director of the Addiction Research Program at Douglas Hospital Research Center, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University, and Head of the Research Department at Pavillon Foster Addictions Treatment Centre. He earned his Ph.D. in General and Experimental Psychology at Concordia University in 1990. From 1995-2007, he has been supported by the Research Scholar Award (Junior, Senior) from the Conseil québécois de la recherche sociale for his applied research into substance abuse treatment. He and his team have conducted studies that evaluate the relative merits of several established and emerging therapeutic approaches to substance abuse, including relapse prevention, 12 step-inspired aftercare, Motivational Interviewing and opportunistic brief intervention in frontline settings. His research team is currently targeting psychobiological and neurocognitive mediators of drunk driving, as well as brief interventions specifically designed for high risk offenders.

Mardi 5 février 2008 
11h45 à 13h00 
Université de Montréal, 3150, rue Jean-Brillant, local C-9141

Résumé de la conférence : In 2003, 2,800 Canadians died and 17,000 suffered serious, often disabling injuries from motor vehicle crashes. More than a third of these fatalities were associated with DWI. A first conviction for DWI is a singular opportunity to identify offenders at high risk to re-offend and to match them to an appropriate modality of treatment. Nevertheless, the capacity to realize this concrete objective has been elusive in part due to heterogeneity of the DWI population, and limitations inherent in current psychosocial and alcoholism-focussed assessment protocols. Over the past five years, our multidisciplinary team has broken new ground in DWI research in clarifying putative psychobiological and neurocognitive substrates of DWI risk and associated high risk behaviours, as well as by developing an effective ultra brief intervention (30 minutes) for high risk recidivists. These advances, their implication for understanding persistent DWI behaviour, improvement of DWI countermeasures, and on-going studies are discussed.