Center for Cross-Cultural Research Speaker Series Presents: Community-Engaged Neuroscience

American Indians (AI) populations bear a disproportionate burden of a variety of psychopathology including substance use anxiety, depression, PTSD, and suicide. Risk for such conditions has root causes in long standing intergeneration trauma, and high rates of current environmental risk factors and trauma exposure.

A promising avenue for addressing these disparities is a scientifically rigorous understanding of the protective effects of traditional cultural engagement. Although demonstrated to be beneficial across a wide range of health outcomes, a clear delineation of the functional processes underlying these salutogenic effects is unclear. Conceptualizing traditional cultural engagement as a suite of multilevel protective and resilience factors is a promising approach to informing precision medicine interventions that are culturally grounded and ensure community impact.

This presentation will review a series of empirical investigations examining the utility of neurocognitive mechanisms in understanding mental health difficulties related to trauma exposure among a heterogenous sample of urban AI adults. It will offer a framework for clinical-cultural neuroscience as a way forward in addressing mental health disparities using community engaged research methods. Additionally, it will present empirical data demonstrating brain reactivity to cultural engagement and ongoing community engaged protocols for advancing clinical-cultural neuroscience.