Schizophrenia Research
Progressive reconfiguration of resting-state brain networks as psychosis develops. Cao et al., 2019. We observed progressive reduction in network efficiency and progressive increase in network diversity in converters compared with non-converters and controls.These results provide preliminary evidence for longitudinal reconfiguration of resting state brain networks during psychosis development.
Clinical Psychology Review
Dual-process theory, conflict processing, and delusional belief. Bronstein et al., 2019. Reasoning biases have been repeatedly associated with delusions. It has been theorized that these biases may arise when individuals fail to sufficiently engage analytic (conscious and effortful) forms of reasoning in the presence of response conflict. These accounts give conflict processing impairments a central place in pathways leading to delusions. Accordingly, the present literature review was conducted with the goal of critically evaluating whether impaired conflict processing might be a primary initiating deficit in pathways relevant to the generation of delusion-relevant reasoning biases and the formation and/or maintenance of delusions themselves.
American Journal of Psychiatry
Characterizing Covariant Trajectories of Individuals at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis Across Symptomatic and Functional Domains. Allswede et al., 2019. Among individuals at high-risk for psychosis, the range of symptomatic and functional outcomes remains unclear. We used multi-trajectory modeling to identify subgroups with similar patterns of improvement across clinical symptom domains and measures of functioning. We found three groups with similar patterns of change (i.e, rapid, moderate, or no improvement) across domains, revealing consistency in impairment that supports a syndromal nature of psychosis.
The primary goals of the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory at Yale University are to elucidate genetic, neural, and behavioral mechanisms underlying psychotic forms of mental illness – principally schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – and to develop effective intervention and prevention strategies targeting these mechanisms. Our approaches include structural, functional and metabolic brain imaging, neurocognitive assessment, and quantitative and molecular genetics. These approaches are applied in the context of twin studies, longitudinal developmental studies, birth cohort studies, and randomized, controlled trials.