# BrainAware: Interactive digital psychoeducation for adolescents and young adults with substance use disorders

> **NIH NIH R44** · ANDAMIO GAMES, LLC · 2020 · $133,595

## Abstract

Treatment professionals struggle to get adolescents and young adults to engage and persist with treatment for
substance abuse disorders. It is particularly difficult to maintain interest or enthusiasm with two core elements
of evidence-based substance abuse treatment, psychoeducation and peer support. We propose to counter
young people's resistance to treatment by creating an interactive educational app that is engaging, provides
sound instruction, and facilitates peer interaction.
Andamio Games is partnering with the Perelman School of Medicine's Center for Studies of Addiction at
the University of Pennsylvania, a nationally recognized laboratory for research and development of new
treatments for substance use disorders. We will design, develop, and test a learning game called BrainAware
based on adapted content from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and supplemented with original
curriculum on medication-assisted-treatment (MAT), to teach the neurobiology of addiction to adolescents and
young adults in behavioral treatment. We will concurrently develop a dashboard companion app that will
provide counselors with unique capabilities to effectively lead group psychoeducation sessions.
With funding from a previous NIMH grant, Andamio has already tackled the problem of making
neuroscience more engaging and easier to learn by developing the mobile educational app iNeuron and testing
it with high school students. Our educational efficacy study of over 300 students in 20 classrooms
demonstrated that using iNeuron resulted in larger concept knowledge gains relative to standard instruction.
For this Fast-Track project we will build BrainAware on the foundation of iNeuron’s existing neural
simulator and instructional design, and use our in-house app development toolkit. A key feature developed for
iNeuron that will be adapted for BrainAware is collaborative play, where peers must together across devices to
solve problems. BrainAware’s counselor dashboard will be adapted from the one developed for iNeuron,
allowing counselors to monitor and respond to individual and group activity in real time.
We will design BrainAware in consultation with experts in the neurobiology of addiction, treatment
counselors, and a youth/young adult community advisory board, then test BrainAware in an educational
efficacy study with adolescents and young adults undergoing substance use disorder treatment. We will test
the hypothesis that using BrainAware will result in larger gains in concept knowledge and increased
engagement relative to learning with standard psychoeducation instructional methods.
Upon successful completion of the study, the BrainAware app and dashboard will be marketed to over
15,000 treatment facilities through our commercial partner Hazelden Publishing. Our vision is to ultimately
create a comprehensive, interactive digital curriculum for psychoeducation that can be utilized by adolescents
and young adults with substance use disorders to positive...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9893005
- **Project number:** 5R44GM130195-03
- **Recipient organization:** ANDAMIO GAMES, LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Katrina Bumanis Schleisman
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $133,595
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2020-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9893005

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9893005, BrainAware: Interactive digital psychoeducation for adolescents and young adults with substance use disorders (5R44GM130195-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9893005. Licensed CC0.

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