Top

Author Archive |

Early Career Awardee – Faleye Roheemat

Early Career Awardee Banner

Faleye Roheemat

Hello, my name is Faleye Roheemat. This study explores the neuroprotective potential of Nigella sativa and its implications for neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. 

 

The Problem & Why It Matters: 

Parkinson’s disease is characterized by progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons, leading to oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. Similarly, schizophrenia involves dopaminergic dysfunction, which may be linked to oxidative damage. Paraquat, a herbicide known to induce oxidative stress, was used to create a Parkinson’s-like condition in mice and while current treatments like Pramipexole help manage symptoms, they don’t fully prevent neurodegeneration. This highlights the need for new neuroprotective therapies and Nigella sativa, also known as black seed,  has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, making it a potential candidate for neuroprotection. 

 

Method, Potential Solutions & Key Findings: 

40 mice were divided into four groups: a control group, a paraquat-induced group which is the PD model, a paraquat + Pramipexole group which is the standard PD drug, and a paraquat + Nigella sativa oil group. Histological analysis revealed significant neuronal loss and oxidative stress in the paraquat-induced group. However, mice treated with Nigella sativa oil showed preserved neuronal integrity and reduced oxidative markers, with results comparable to the Pramipexole-treated group. 

 

Benefits and Next Steps: 

These findings suggest that Nigella sativa oil may serve as a natural neuroprotective therapy for both Parkinson's disease and Schizophrenia. Further research is needed to understand the molecular pathways and explore clinical applications.  

 

Thank you for your time and I look for to discussing this further at my poster presentation. 

Early Career Awardee – Svenja Kretzer

Early Career Awardee Banner

Svenja Kretzer

Hi, I'm Svenja. I'm a PhD student at King's College London and A*STAR Singapore. My poster is looking at the persistence of psychotic-like experiences through adolescence and their relationship with mental health problems and brain structure. Come see my poster S55, on Sunday at lunchtime. 

The problem: psychotic-like experiences are common in children and adolescents, but only some of them signal an increased risk for a broad range of mental health problems, including psychosis, while others are not harmful and commonly decreased through adolescence. 

The challenge is identifying when psychotic-like experiences are benign and when they are clinically relevant and shouldn't go unnoticed.  

Why does this matter? Around 50% of adult psychiatric disorders show their first symptoms before the age of 15, and 75% before the age of 18. So, overlooking clinically relevant psychotic-like experiences means missing a critical window for targeted screening and early prevention and intervention in adolescence. 

The potential solution could be looking at whether psychotic-like experiences are persistent. If persistence indicates clinically harmful psychotic-like experiences, we can identify at-risk adolescents early and flag them for targeted screening, prevention, and intervention.  

Here, we looked at a longitudinal cohort of adolescents from Southeast London and investigated whether persistent psychotic-like experiences are associated with mental health problems and biological risks – for example, structural MRI, which I present on my poster. 

The benefits of fixing this: finding adolescents with harmful psychotic-like experiences could help us conduct targeted screening, early prevention, and intervention to potentially prevent psychotic disorders more effectively, and support mental well-being before symptoms escalate.  

We can improve resilience in young people with psychotic-like experiences, for example, by educating them on the experiences to de-stigmatise them and thereby potentially reduce distress. To find out about this more, come to poster S55 on Sunday, 12:00 to 2:00 PM. Thank you! 

Early Career Awardee – Xiaolong Zhang

Early Career Awardee Banner

Xiaolong Zhang

Hi, my name is Xiaolong. My research is about evaluating a smartphone-based symptom self-monitoring app for psychosis in China. Psychosis causes a significant burden in China, where limited mental health resources hinder access to care. Unlike the community-based care model in many other countries, the mental health care system in China is designed as a hospital-centred care, meaning the majority of well-trained mental health professionals are concentrated in psychiatric hospitals located in urban areas, which creates barriers for people living in rural or remote areas to access care. Smartphone-based remote monitoring offers a promising solution. We developed the YouXin app, a digital remote monitoring tool co-designed with people with psychosis in China, to address the unmet need in mental health provision. On the right side here shows the screenshots of the app, which consist of active and passive monitoring. Active symptom monitoring prompted two times a day randomly to assess the psychotic symptoms and mood symptoms of the participants, and a passive sensing module was used to record location and activity data via GPS and step counts to assess negative symptoms. Participants can opt in and out the passive sensing recording based on their preference throughout the study. We conducted a mixed-method feasibility study to test the validity, feasibility, acceptability, and safety of the app. We successfully recruited 40 participants with 82% completing outcome measures and 60% achieving acceptable active monitoring engagement, and 33% recording sufficient passive monitoring data to extract mobility indicators. And the qualitative interview showed that participants found completing the self-monitoring app rewarding and experienced a sense of achievement. Most participants felt the app was acceptable and easy to use and no unbearable burdens or opportunity costs were reported. Participants found the app easy to use and attributed this to the training provided at the beginning of the study. Privacy and data security were not major concerns for participants largely due to trust in their treating hospital around data protection. A few participants said they had built some form of relationship with the app and would miss the app when the study finished. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to discussing more about this study with you in the conference. 

Early Career Awardee – Yi-hang Huang

Early Career Awardee Banner

Yi-hang Huang

My name is Yi-hang Huang from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. I’m studying how brain networks change in people with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Learning more about these changes can help us create better ways to diagnose these conditions early, design personalized therapies, and improve overall patient care. 

Think of these brain networks as highways in the mind. In psychiatric disorders, the “traffic” on these highways might move at unusual speeds. Traditional methods often look at the average traffic across an entire city, which hides individual differences—like rush-hour jams or late-night free-flow. In contrast, a measure called Individual Variability in Functional Connectivity (IVFC) is like tracking each driver’s route in real time, capturing small detours and personal traffic patterns. By zooming in on these individual differences, we can uncover hidden “back roads” and “bottlenecks” that paint a more accurate picture of each person’s brain. 

So far, we’ve found that schizophrenia shows the most widespread disruptions, followed by bipolar disorder and then major depressive disorder. This suggests that these network problems form a spectrum across the disorders. With this new understanding, we can refine diagnoses, tailor treatments, and ultimately improve outcomes for those affected. What underlying mechanisms drive these differences? I invite you to visit my poster for a deeper dive and to explore these intriguing questions together. 

Early Career Awardee – Yohannes Haile

Early Career Awardee Banner

Yohannes Haile

Hello, I am Yohannes in this conference I will present how we developed the Ethiopian assessment the Ethiopian Cognitive Assessment battery in Schizophrenia. Dr Habtamu, Dr Cella, and Professor Alem are other research members.  

Cognitive impairment is common in people with schizophrenia, almost all people with schizophrenia that is 98% of them showed cognitive decrement compared to their premorbid status. Compared to healthy controls people with schizophrenia showed one to two standard deviations bellow the normative ee mean and this impairment is seen in people with schizophrenia who are not taking antipsychotics. And cognition is associated with poor personal, social, and treatment outcomes.  

However, most of the available measures have been developed in west count in Western countries and they are not always well well adapted for use in low-income ee seating and norms are also doesn’t exist in these seatings. When we come to Ethiopia none of ee those measures has been validated for use in people with schizophrenia before. Hence, this study aims at filling ee this gap.  

And when we come when we see the main findings; we developed ECAS by sleeting different tests from different batteries to address ee six main domains of cognition that we thought will be impaired in people with schizophrenia. And we found that ee ECAS is a promising tool in terms of feasibility with short duration of administration ee and p practicality and tolerability and with high inter-rater, test retest, and ee small practice effect. And with good ee validity in terms of structural validity and known-group validity. And finally, the item response theory-based analysis showed that the tool best function among participants with moderate impairment.  

Thank you 

Early Career Awardee – Alfredo Sklar

Early Career Awardee Banner

Alfredo Sklar

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:57:59
Alfredo Sklar. I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:05
In general, my work focuses on examining both the visual and auditory processing deficits in schizophrenia longitudinally.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:13
Today I'll be talking about the modulation of the N170 event-related potential by emotional facial expressions.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:21
In both chronic as well as early stage schizophrenia.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:28
So schizophrenia is characterized by very severe social functioning deficits. That are present early in the disease course.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:35
Impaired recognition of emotional facial expressions contribute to these deficits. And what's more, EEG studies have shown that the typical enhancement of the N170 component to face stimuli is impaired to schizophrenia.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:50
And there's some preliminary evidence that it's modulation by emotional stimuli is impaired in chronic illness as well.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:58:59
The current study included 26 individuals with schizophrenia during the first hospitalization and 28 during more chronic stages of their illness.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:06
And these were compared to age-matched controls. We recorded EEG during presentation of neutral as well as emotional facial expressions.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:16
And participants were asked to detect neutral faces as each one was presented.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:22
N170 amplitudes were recorded from P9 and 10 electrodes for the left and right hemispheres.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:28
And these amplitudes were correlated with symptom severity, which was assessed using the positive and negative syndrome scale.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:37
So turning to our results, among the younger cohort, the data of which is shown on the left side of the screen here.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:44
Both healthy controls and first hospitalized patients showed enhancement of their N170 component to all categories of emotional expressions versus neutral faces.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 15:59:56
As you can see here. In contrast, there was significant interaction between group and facial expression among the older cohort with individuals during chronic stages of their illness exhibiting a lack of any N170 amplitude modulation.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 16:00:14
This, however, remained intact among individuals and the age-matched healthy control cohort.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 16:00:24
Importantly, weaker modulation of the N170 across emotional expressions was associated with more severe negative symptoms in both the chronic as well as the first hospitalized patients.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 16:00:36
Taken together, these data suggest the progressive pathology of N170 generators in schizophrenia that's associated with some of the most persistent and apparent symptoms of the disorder.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 16:00:48
If you'd like to learn more about some of these data, please stop by our poster, which is number M24, and I'll be presenting it on poster day number two.

[Sklar, Alfredo] 16:00:58
And thank you for your attention.

 

Wordpress Social Share Plugin powered by Ultimatelysocial