# Violence Across the Lifespan - Opioids Maternal Brain

> **NIH NIH R01** · STATE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK STONY BROOK · 2022 · $223,300

## Abstract

Project Summary/ Abstract
 Violence Across the Lifespan – Opioids Maternal Brain
 Peripartum women affected by the fast-growing and devastating epidemic of Opioid use disorder (OUD) in
the US constitute an understudied, underrepresented, and underreported (U3) population of significant public
health importance. OUD, which is associated with violence across the lifespan, manifests withdrawal
symptoms, impaired interpersonal interactions, depression, neonatal abstinence syndrome and higher risks of
child maltreatment. We plan to piggy-back this administrative supplement on our current NIDA R01 DA047336
“Opioids and Maternal Brain-Behavior Adaptation During the Early Postpartum”, which is examining
mechanisms in our corticolimbic maternal behavior neurocircuit (MBN) that regulate parenting behaviors and
may be affected by OUD. The MBN contains brain circuits, that are also established to be affected childhood
trauma and interpersonal violence. For maternal behavior, there are two reciprocally inhibiting subsystems for
(1) care, mediated by the medial preoptic area in the hypothalamus, ventral tegmental area, nucleus
accumbens and ventral pallidum; and (2) defense/aggression, mediated by periaqueductal grey. The MBN
regulates flexible responses to the demands of mother's own infant during the early postpartum period – such
as to the unique, ethologically salient own-baby cry and empathic responses to own infant images. Within the
scope of our R01, this Supplement will examine human maternal brain-behavior in the participant mothers
undergoing Buprenorphine Treatment (BT) for OUD (n=32) as compared to non-OUD depression Matched
Controls (MC, n=32). In the concurrent R01, all participants are already undergoing fMRI scans at ~6 months
month postpartum with measures of resting-state functional connectivity, neural responses to own-baby cry,
and gray matter volumes of MBN. The supplement will allow us to add a “bonus” Child Face Mirror Task
(CFMT) as a neural measure of maternal empathy. We will also add measures of child & recent trauma,
interpersonal violence, social inequality, deprivation, discrimination, and resilience. Thus. with this
interdisciplinary supplement, in answer to NOT-OD-22-031 “Research on the Health of Women of
Understudied, Underrepresented and Underreported (U3) Populations”, we propose specific aims to explore
a mediation model that will (1) examine associations between childhood trauma and current
interpersonal violence, OUD, and MBN dysregulation and (2) examine brain-behavior mechanisms in
maternal social cognition and intersubjectivity, that may be crucial for OUD and infant outcome. We will
also explore the scant knowledge and brain behavior mechanisms on the impact of violence across the
lifespan on the U3 population of pregnant women – with and without OUD. Translational potentials include
better understandings of risk/resilience profiles for mothers with OUD that bear the transgenerational burden of
peripartum drug use and...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10558931
- **Project number:** 3R01DA047336-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** STATE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK STONY BROOK
- **Principal Investigator:** James Edward Swain
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $223,300
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-09-30 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10558931

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10558931, Violence Across the Lifespan - Opioids Maternal Brain (3R01DA047336-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10558931. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*