2004 |
Bachman, Peter |
F31Activity Code Description: To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.). |
Electrophysiology and Neurocognition in Schizophrenia @ University of California Los Angeles
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed study will examine electrophysiological correlates of disrupted spatial working memory in schizophrenia, patients and their genetically vulnerable relatives, in an attempt to characterize the nature and extent of this neurocognitive deficit, as well as its heritability. Specifically delineated is a data analysis protocol intended to describe neurocognitive aspects of working memory, including the extent of integration of distributed cortical activity, as well as the absolute magnitude of this activation. Although patients and their relatives show degraded working memory performance in addition to disrupted functional connectivity among the nodes of a putative cortical working memory circuit, critical points of ambiguity remain: e.g., when patients show degraded working memory performance, are their brains relatively less active than controls' brains, or relatively more active and less efficient? The present analyses address this issue, among others. Also proposed is the development of a cognitive task designed to assess the nature and extent of the overlap between spatial working memory and goal-directed visual attention, two constructs shown to be impaired in schizophrenia patients and their relatives. Further, both working memory and attention are believed to have relevance to the information processing difficulties shown to predict functional outcome in patients and indicate vulnerability in their relatives; however, their relationship must be studied directly in order to parse respective contributions to variance in functioning.
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0.915 |
2012 — 2016 |
Bachman, Peter |
K23Activity Code Description: To provide support for the career development of investigators who have made a commitment of focus their research endeavors on patient-oriented research. This mechanism provides support for a 3 year minimum up to 5 year period of supervised study and research for clinically trained professionals who have the potential to develop into productive, clinical investigators. |
Eeg Biomarkers of Psychosis Risk and Adolescent Neurodevelopment @ University of California Los Angeles
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): With growing recognition that a number of psychiatric illnesses previously thought to be restricted to adulthood actually show their initial signs in childhood and begin to emerge fully during adolescence, NIMH mandated in its Strategic Plan that clinical research should, compare trajectories of healthy development to those of mental disorders in order to better understand the first instance or instances, when development moves off course. Specifically, this objective involves the need to map the trajectory of mental disorders using imaging technologies, and discovery of early detection of risk factors for mental disorders. Consistent with these priorities, the current application involves a plan for th applicant to transform from an adult psychopathology researcher to a developmental cognitive neuroscientist with skills and expertise to study adolescence as a sensitive period in the development of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Written in consultation with a team of clinical and developmental neuroscientists, as well as a developmental psychologist and clinical psychologist who both conduct basic research, and a statistician with expertise in longitudinal work, the proposal describes a one year-long investigation of cognition and neural connectivity in three groups of adolescents (ages 12-17 years) : help-seeking patients judged to be at clinical high-risk for developing schizophrenia (due to the presence of sub-threshold symptoms), patients who meet DSM-IV criteria for a first episode of schizophrenia, and matched community comparison subjects. At study enrollment and then again at 12 month follow-up, all participants will perform a set of experimental cognitive tests while event-related EEG data are recorded. EEG is capable of providing temporally-sensitive measures of synchronized activity in large-scale neural circuits. The proposed cognitive tests each recruit various subsets of prefrontal-posterior neural circuits. These particular neural circuits are critical for linking the prefrontal cortex to more posterior, earlier-maturing cortical regions (e.g., sensory and motor areas), and are the site of some of the most dramatic development and optimization that occurs in the brain during adolescence, as it transitions to stable, adult functioning. Therefore, the efficiency with which these neural circuits function under cognitive challenge should provide evidence of baseline dysfunction, and change in that efficiency over the year-long study should provide evidence of aberrant maturation if present. In fact, latent risk for developing schizophrenia is thought to dysregulate a subset of these functional connections (e.g., through selective pathology of pyramidal neurons synapses); however, exactly when these illness mechanisms arise with respect to the appearance of frank psychotic symptoms and with respect to landmarks in typical adolescent development remains unknown. Collectively, these results will provide a sensitive measure of the integrity of the neural connections that are thought to provide the substrate for both adolescent neurodevelopment and schizophrenia pathogenesis. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This study will help identify the neural changes that precede the onset of symptoms and decrease in real-world functioning that mark the first episode of schizophrenia. Detection of these critical neural changes will provide clinicians with tools to differentiate which help-seeking adolescents are most likely to go on to develop schizophrenia, so that treatment resources could be directed to them. Additionally, the training plan will provide the applicant with an opportunity to become an expert in the changes that occur in the brain during adolescence, which may in turn help him to discover indicators of vulnerability to developing the range of neurological and psychiatric illnesses that appear during that developmental stage.
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0.915 |