About Brian
On October 8th 2013, Brian experienced his first day clean after 15 years of chronic heroin addiction. Instead of perceiving his addiction as a failure, he embraced a second chance at life and went to university to study the complexities of human behaviour. Brian graduated with a degree in psychology in 2017 winning several awards, including a fully funded PhD scholarship in Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. Since then, he has become a lecturer in Trinity College and University College Dublin, self-development coach, business owner, and motivational speaker for high-performance and personal growth. Brian has also recently acquired a deal with mainstream publishers to co-write a book about mindfulness.
Current Research
Brian’s PhD research is funded by the Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, and will objectively explore the impact of mindfulness-based interventions on adults who misuse substances. Specifically, the aim of this research is to identify the most significant predictors of successful abstinence and treatment response following mindfulness-based interventions.
Brian’s other research interests reside around the basic verbal processes (i.e. language and cognition) underpinning human suffering and positive mental health. He is specifically interested in how such processes (e.g. compulsive thinking) might be implicated in addiction and mindfulness, and how they may facilitate a greater appreciation of how to treat substance use disorders.
Publications
Pennie, B. & Kelly, M. E., (2018). An examination of generalised implicit biases towards ‘wanting more’ as a proxy measure of materialistic behaviour: A Relational Frame Theory perspective. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. 8, 17-28.
O’Halloran, L., Pennie, B., Jollans, L., Vahey, N., Rai, L., & Whelan, R. (2018). A combination of impulsivity subdomains predict alcohol intoxication frequency. Alcohol and Alcoholism. 42(8), 1530-1540.
Pennie, B. & Whelan. R., (under review). Positive and negative emotion-driven impulsivity have separate motivational pathways to alcohol misuse
Pennie, B. & Kelly, M. E., (under review). Geographical influences of the Mediterranean diet on the cognitive health of older adults: A systematic review.
Pennie, B., Zhipeng, C., O’Halloran, L., Whelan, R., (under review). Genetics, imaging and cognition: big data approaches to addiction research. Cognition and addiction: A researcher’s guide from mechanisms towards interventions.
Website
www.brianpennie.com
Contact me
pennieb@tcd.ie
Professional Profiles:
