Schizophrenia News and Research

Latest Schizophrenia News and Research

Drugs that adjust dopamine levels in the brain greatly affect how people react to success and failure

In a first-of-its-kind study on humans, researchers measured how dopamine-related drugs affect the striatum, a part of the brain that is stimulated by rewards.

27 Apr 2007

Report identifies schizophrenia patients likely to receive depot medication

A report in the April 2007 issue of Psychiatric Services has identified a unique subgroup of schizophrenia patients in the United States who tend to receive depot antipsychotic medications.

26 Apr 2007

Psychotherapeutic drug spending surges

Spending on prescription drugs to treat depression, anxiety, pain, schizophrenia and other conditions climbed from $7.9 billion in 1997 to $20 billion in 2004 - over a 150 percent increase, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

25 Apr 2007

Swedish Big Brother behind lobotomies in the 1940s and 1950s

Sweden was more accepting than the U.S. in its attitude toward lobotomy in the 1940s and 1950s. A possible explanation for this may be the strength of paternalism in Sweden, that is, a greater tendency to make decisions on behalf of the patient in Swedish medical culture than in its American counterpart. This is according to Kenneth Ogren from Umea University in Sweden.

25 Apr 2007

New understanding of schizophrenia

New research helps bridge an important gap in understanding schizophrenia, providing the best evidence to date that defects in the brain's white matter are a key contributor to the disease, which affects about 1 percent of people worldwide.

24 Apr 2007

Discovery of molecular mechanism that alters strength of higher brain network connections

Yale School of Medicine and University of Crete School of Medicine researchers report in Cell April 20 the first evidence of a molecular mechanism that dynamically alters the strength of higher brain network connections.

21 Apr 2007

Bill broadening prescribing rights to psychologists unsafe

Setting the stage for another legislative battle that puts mental health patients in the middle, a bill seeking to give licensed psychologists prescribing privileges for dangerous medications is scheduled to be heard on April 23, 2007 in the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee.

20 Apr 2007

New insights into how the brain controls movements

In the children's game "red light green light," winners are able to stop, and take off running again, more quickly than their comrades.

19 Apr 2007

Internal part of prefrontal cortex identified as key structure for memory formation

Does a specific memory exist for events involving humans, French researchers from the Vulnerability, Adaptation and Psychopathology Laboratory (CNRS/Universit' Paris VI) and Canadian researchers from Douglas Hospital, McGill University (Montreal) have identified the internal part of the prefrontal cortex as the key structure for the memory formation of social information.

19 Apr 2007

New device to test for proteins that play important role in human health and disease

A new technology developed at the University of Toronto is revealing biochemical processes responsible for diseases such as cystic fibrosis and could one day pave the way for pharmaceutical applications.

15 Apr 2007

Full impact of mental health and substance abuse disorders on U.S. community hospitals

Almost one-fourth of all stays in U.S. community hospitals for patients age 18 and older – 7.6 million of nearly 32 million stays – involved depressive, bipolar, schizophrenia and other mental health disorders or substance use related disorders in 2004, according to a new report by HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

11 Apr 2007

MIT model helps see how folds develop and decay in the cerebral cortex

Large mammals--humans, monkeys, and even cats--have brains with a somewhat mysterious feature: The outermost layer has a folded surface. Understanding the functional significance of these folds is one of the big open questions in neuroscience.

10 Apr 2007

Nicotine shown to enhance learning and memory

While nicotine is highly addictive, researchers have also shown the drug to enhance learning and memory, a property that has launched efforts to develop nicotine-like drugs to treat cognitive deficits in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

5 Apr 2007

Stanford technique directly controls brain cell activity with light

Every thought, feeling and action originates from the electrical signals emitted by diverse brain cells enmeshed in a tangle of circuits.

5 Apr 2007

UT Metroplex institutions to collaborate on biomedical research

Researchers from the three University of Texas campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area are combining their expertise in biomedical science, engineering and physical sciences on projects aimed at solving real-world medical problems.

5 Apr 2007

Men and women who wait to have babies later in life may increase their children's risk for autism

The study investigated 132,844 children born at Kaiser Permanente hospitals in its Northern California region over a five-year period (1995-1999) and identified 593 children who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

4 Apr 2007

Computer model behaves like humans on visual categorization task

Computers can usually out-compute the human brain, but there are some tasks, such as visual object recognition, that the brain performs easily yet are very challenging for computers.

4 Apr 2007

Substantial need for mental health services in the general population

First large-scale assessment of the general population shows nearly 30 percent need mental health care and about one-third of them get it.

3 Apr 2007

Precise region in the frontal cortex may be specialised for learning social information

Is there a specific memory for events involving people Researchers in the Vulnerability, Adaptation and Psychopathology Laboratory (CNRS/University Paris VI France ) and a Canadian team at Douglas Hospital, McGill University (Montreal), have identified the internal part of the prefrontal cortex as being the key structure for memorising social information.

2 Apr 2007

Study results on bifeprunox in patients with schizophrenia

Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Lundbeck A/S presented clinical study results on bifeprunox at an international medical congress this week.

2 Apr 2007