Hi! Just wanted to post this to ask people to please sign the petition to the President and Congress to increase funding for research related to finding cures for mental illness. It only takes a minute! Please share with your friends too!
https://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-president-and-congress-fund-research-to-cure-mental-illness
As reported in Schizophrenia Research, vol. 134 (2012) 118-124, Prerona Mukherjee et. al. presented their study that showed lower connection activity levels from the amygdala to the rest of the brain, specifically, to the inferior parietal lobule, for people with schizophrenia as compared to controls. The study involved 19 participants diagnosed according to the DSM-IV with schizophrenia and 24 controls matched for demographics like educational level, region, and age.
The study involved pre-assessment of symptoms and scanning the participants with an fMRI machine while they were shown fearful, neutral and baseline faces. Data was collected and analyzed showing that the participants with schizophrenia displayed reduced connectivity when shown fearful faces. The regions that were implicated involve social-emotional processing that is vital to social interactions.
The study supports the view that there may be a “functional disconnection” in brain regions that support and interpret social cues and emotion processing information for people with schizophrenia. This information also mirrors the symptoms that many patients with schizophrenia present with such as paranoia, flattened affect and lack of correct social cue processing.
Oh, so I haven’t blogged about this yet, but I went up to Seattle with my family about a week ago and participated in the National Institute of Mental Health-funded research project regarding schizophrenia. I had a really great time and the research team was totally fabulous and wonderful!
So, we arrived on a Wednesday afternoon. They took blood samples from
What is ironic is that I’m here in a hotel room in Seattle up late at night watching the movie “Awakenings” just as I finish my own participation in research related to my own mental illness
You might be asked to participate in an eye tracking exercise like the one shown above. All of the equipment is just used to keep your head still and to track your eyes.
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I just wanted to let you all know about this schizophrenia research study I am most likely going to be participating in and I hope that if any of you out there are interested, you will join in on the study! Well, as you might know, I got a new job at schizophrenia.com. Well, one day I was visiting the site and an ad popped up looking for research participants for this schizophrenia research study! Here is the link: http://www.schizophreniaresearch.net/Involved.asp
Unfortunately, at this time it isn’t an
kristinbell.org 