For many teens, drinking can feel like a rite of passage. But for some, it’s the first step toward misuse and addiction.
To help young people struggling with alcohol, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas are embarking on a five-year project that will peer inside the brain during group counseling sessions. These will involve teens talking with one another and a therapist to sort through their feelings about drinking and build motivation to change.
Backed by a $1.17 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the team will use a neuroimaging technique called hyperscanning to record brain activity from 124 pairs of 18- and 19-year-olds. By scanning two people while they interact, researchers can see whether their brain activities start to sync up — a possible marker of social connection. Participants will be checked on at three months, six months and one year to measure behavior change and treatment impact.
“This novel project will use functional MRI to examine group therapy in ways that can teach us what therapeutic tactics work best and why,” said Francesa Filbey, a professor of psychology at UT Dallas, in a news release. “Hyperscanning is a great tool for looking at real-time, dynamic interactions between individuals. I think we can learn a great deal by applying it in this manner and asking the right questions.”
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Francesa Filbey is a professor of psychology at UT Dallas.
UT Dallas
But alcohol remains a major part of the picture. In the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 12.7 million people ages 12 to 20 reported having had at least one drink in their lives and 10.4 million said they drank in the past year. About 4,000 people younger than 21 die from excessive alcohol use each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The kind of therapy used in the study is called group motivational interviewing. It has emerged as a promising approach for teens, who are often unlikely to seek, receive or stick with help for hazardous drinking, said Sarah Feldstein Ewing, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health and Filbey’s co-investigator.
The approach also “recognizes that there are real-world reasons why people are drinking,” Feldstein Ewing said in the news release. “Through it, we try to help young people identify both why they might be drinking and what role drinking might be playing in their lives, and also how drinking might get in the way or cost them opportunities.”
Research suggests what someone says during motivational interviewing matters. Studies have linked lower alcohol and drug use to people who express their reasons for cutting back or quitting. When someone makes the case for staying the same, that tends to be associated with more substance use and fewer concrete steps toward change.
With hyperscanning, Filbey said, the researchers are testing whether synced-up brain activity during a group session signals a stronger connection between participants and whether that predicts better outcomes. She and Feldstein Ewing also want to understand why some pairs seem to click more easily than others.
“When two brains are in harmony, does that represent connectedness that we can then learn to maximize?” Filbey said. The goal, she added, is to determine who is most responsive to this type of therapy and how to get the most out of it.
Miriam Fauzia is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.