Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2005

Mentor: Carol Tamminga
Department: Psychiatry
Room number: FL 6.635
Mail Code: 9070
Phone number: 214-648-4924
E-mail: carol.tamminga@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title: "Phenotyping in Schizophrenia and other Disorders with Psychosis"

Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): 052004-021

Animal subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable):

Project Type (patient-based research, animal-based research, or basic research; this characterization is only to permit a general classification for grouping similar types of projects)

Brief Description of Project:

The project is patient-based research involving patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder and their family members. We will be studying electrophysiological markers- such as, eye tracking, prepulse inhibition and p50 auditory stimulation; task activated functional MRI; neurocognitive tests and DNA on patients and their families. We would like to note the frequency in abnormalities in these tests in patients and their unaffected family members and also examine the correlation between the different disease to identify a psychosis phenotype.

Project Type (patient-based research, animal-based research, or basic research; this characterization is only to permit a general classification for grouping similar types of projects)

Brief Description of Project:

The proposed project is a functional MRI study of schizophrenic and normal volunteers. Subjects will undergo a diagnostic workup, including a psychiatric history and battery of standardized assessments of positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Functional MR images of the entire brain will be acquired while subjects perform several cognitive tasks thought to activate the MTL and other pertinent brain regions. The proposed study will evaluate hippocampal activity during novelty detection, encoding and retrieval of associations between individual stimuli, and during other cognitive tasks thought to produce abnormal BOLD-fMRI activations in schizophrenia. Activations in the various parts of the MTL and other pertinent brain areas will be compared between normal and schizophrenic subjects and among the schizophrenic symptom subgroups.

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:

Return to UT Southwestern Homepage

Return to Student Research Projects Index