# Affective And Cognitive Processes Postpartum In Mothers With Opioid Use Disorder

> **NIH NIH P50** · UNIVERSITY OF OREGON · 2020 · $298,722

## Abstract

7. PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
The current opioid epidemic increasingly impacts women of childbearing age and pregnant women, creating an
urgent need to identify optimal ways to support women with opioid use disorder (OUD) who are parenting.
While it is understood that women with OUD and their children face significant challenges, the nature of these
challenges are poorly understood, making it difficult to provide targeted interventions for this population. The
reward-stress dysregulation model of addicted parenting put forth by Mayes and colleagues highlights reward
sensitivity and stress reactivity as overlapping core processes involved in addiction and parenting. The model
postulates that low reward sensitivity and heightened stress reactivity among women with substance use
difficulties will contribute to parenting difficulties and increased likelihood of ongoing addictive behaviors. The
proposed project will examine several key elements of this model that remain untested, and consider the role
of inhibitory control, a key component of executive functioning, which plays an important role in both addiction
and parenting. The project focuses on the postpartum period as a critical time for the emergence of parenting
behaviors and formation of emotional connectedness and attachment between mother and infant. Prior
research highlights the postpartum period as a time of heightened behavioral and biological plasticity for core
cognitive and affective processes relevant to addiction and parenting. As such, it represents a time of potential
vulnerability and opportunity for women with OUD and their children. The proposed project will employ a
prospective longitudinal design to examine core cognitive and affective processes, reward sensitivity, stress
reactivity/regulation and inhibitory control, over the first year postpartum in women with (N=60) and without
OUD (N=60). Assessments will occur in late pregnancy and at 6-weeks, 6-months and 12-months postpartum.
We will employ multimodal assessment of the constructs of interest. We will examine longitudinal trajectories of
these cognitive and affective processes to characterize plasticity during the postpartum period, and to identify
key contextual factors contributing to the trajectory of these processes for women with OUD and without OUD.
We will consider how interactions between reward sensitivity, stress reactivity and inhibitory control relate to
maternal parenting behaviors and the extent to which these processes explain differences in parenting and
infant-maternal attachment and emotional connectedness for women with versus without OUD. Finally, we will
employ functional magnetic resonance imaging in a subsample of women with (N=30) and without (N=30)
OUD to explore the underlying neurocircuitry of the core cognitive and affective processes of interest.
Examination of how core cognitive and affective processes relate to emerging parenting behaviors and infant-
maternal attachment for women with OUD w...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9990769
- **Project number:** 5P50DA048756-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
- **Principal Investigator:** Kristen L Mackiewicz Seghete
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $298,722
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** — → —

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9990769

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9990769, Affective And Cognitive Processes Postpartum In Mothers With Opioid Use Disorder (5P50DA048756-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9990769. Licensed CC0.

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