Adrienne Lahti, M.D., Heman E. Drummond Professor and Chair of the UAB Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology, along with Junghee Lee, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Psychiatry & Neurobiology and Geropsychiatry Research Chair, and Nina Kraguljac, M.D., M.A., former UAB employee in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology and professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Ohio State University, have been awarded a $5.3 million National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant titled "Multidimensional aging trajectories in mid to late-life psychosis (MAP)."
The research project aims to understand how aging affects individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). Despite the usual belief that SSD has a developmental origin, recent findings suggest that age-related changes may occur.
"While aging is considered abnormal in schizophrenia, data on the unusual aging phenomena and the potential mechanisms are limited,” Lee said. “To address this knowledge gap, we plan to examine brain and cognitive age-related signatures in individuals with schizophrenia, utilizing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and a social neuroscientific approach."
“This is very exciting because we will obtain measures of brain function and bioenergetics using the capabilities of the UAB Civitan International Neuroimaging Laboratory (CINL) 3 Tesla magnet but also that of the 7 Tesla magnet located at the MRI Research Center at Auburn University, which provides high spatial resolution imaging,” Lahti added.
Lahti, Lee, and Kraguljac provide key insights on the relevance of their study for the scientific community.
Q: What motivated you to pursue this specific research topic, and what are the project's main objectives?
Our limited understanding of aging in schizophrenia was the motivating factor for pursuing this research. It remains uncertain if aging occurs across multiple levels in a similar way. It is not clear which potential mechanism is responsible for the aging phenomenon in schizophrenia. By recruiting a large number of participants with schizophrenia and community controls, we plan to characterize the aging phenomenon in schizophrenia across multiple levels.
Q: How do you envision the outcomes of your research benefiting the field?
Once characterizing abnormal aging phenomenon and its underlying mechanism in schizophrenia, our goal is to identify actional treatment targets for slowing down aberrant aging processes in schizophrenia.
Q: In what ways do you plan to engage with UAB scientific communities to share findings and knowledge from your research?
We will share our research findings with the UAB scientific community through publications and presentations, fostering discussion and collaboration.