Centre for Translational Neuroimaging in Mental Health Seminar series 2016-17

You are invited to the next seminar of the Centre for Translational Neuroimaging in Mental Health on Tuesday 13 December at 1pm. 

Dr Elizabeth Liddle will present on ‘Schizophrenia: the Salience of Relevance and the Relevance of Salience’ (abstract below).

The talk will take place in Room A08, Institute of Mental Health on Jubilee Campus .

All are welcome to attend - there is parking available for staff and visitors on Jubilee Campus.

Abstract: Schizophrenia has been described as a problem of "aberrant salience".  Patients may assign inappropriate significance to irrelevant events, or fail to assign appropriate significance to relevant events.  We used investigate this using fMRI and magnetoencephalogaphy (MEG). We presented a series of pictures of butterflies and ladybirds to patients with schizophrenia and healthy control participants.  We asked them to press a button whenever a rare "target" item appeared.  Sometimes the butterflies were the relevant items, sometimes the ladybirds. The fMRI scan showed that in brain areas responsive to the difference between relevant and irrelevant pictures, patients with schizophrenia used more oxygen, indicating more neuronal activity. However, the MEG scans showed that the pattern of brain activity in these areas was less synchronised.  Together, our findings suggest inefficient recruitment of these brain areas in patients. This may help to explain why patients with schizophrenia assign inappropriate significance to events.  They may also suggest the kind of psychological therapy that could help restore a more realistic perception of significance.