Science News About Schizophrenia
- Clinical Decision Support System Reduces Cardiovascular Risk in Patients With Serious Mental Illness
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A new study shows the use of a clinical decision support system to prompt the use of shared decision-making tools, such as handouts, may result in positive impacts on long-term cardiovascular health in patients with serious mental illness.
- Gene Readouts Contribute To Distinctness of Mental Disorders
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A new study conducted by researchers at NIMH suggests that differences in the expression of gene transcripts – readouts copied from DNA that help maintain and build our cells – may hold the key to understanding how mental disorders with shared genetic risk factors result in different patterns of onset, symptoms, course of illness, and treatment responses.
- Schizophrenia Risk Gene Linked to Cognitive Deficits in Mice
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Mice with an impaired version of one the few genes definitively linked to schizophrenia showed abnormalities in working memory, mimicking those commonly seen in schizophrenia patients.
- Gene Regulators Work Together for Oversized Impact on Schizophrenia Risk
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Gene expression regulators work together to raise an individual’s risk of developing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia-like gene expression changes modeled in human neurons matched changes found in patients’ brains.
- NIH Announces Funding Awards for National Early Psychosis Learning Community
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NIMH awarded six research grants for studies to develop a learning health care system for the treatment of early psychosis.
- Mental Health Research Centers Forge Collaborations – with ALACRITY
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Mental health research center directors emerged from a recent meeting with a renewed commitment to help each other achieve their common mission – to transform care of children, adolescents and adults with severe psychiatric disorders.
- Neuromelanin-Sensitive MRI Identified as a Potential Biomarker for Psychosis
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Researchers have shown that a type of magnetic resonance imaging — called neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI) — is a potential biomarker for psychosis. NM-MRI signal was found to be a marker of dopamine function in people with schizophrenia and an indicator of the severity of psychotic symptoms in people with this mental illness.
- New Findings Reveal Surprising Role of the Cerebellum in Reward and Social Behaviors
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A new study in rodents has demonstrated, for the first time, that the brain’s cerebellum plays a role in controlling reward and social preference behavior—findings that shed light on the brain circuits critical to the affective and social dysfunction seen across multiple psychiatric disorders.