Schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders represent some of the most complex and debilitating illnesses in psychiatry.
Despite decades of research, the biological mechanisms that drive these conditions remain only partially understood. Recent advances in neuroimaging, transcriptomics, neuropathology, and human brain modeling have begun to offer new insights into the neurobiological disruptions underlying psychosis.
Our faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology at UAB leverage a wide range of cutting-edge methodologies to investigate the cellular, circuit-level, and molecular foundations of schizophrenia. These include high-resolution postmortem analyses, in vivo neuroimaging, pharmacological and computational modeling, gene expression profiling, and longitudinal clinical studies.
Research efforts are directed toward understanding:
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Synaptic and mitochondrial dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other regions implicated in working memory and cognitive control.
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Altered glutamatergic signaling and intracellular homeostasis, including disruptions in energy metabolism and protein trafficking.
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Social cognition and perceptual processing deficits using behavioral assays, neuroimaging, and machine learning approaches.
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Neurodevelopmental vulnerability, including the long-term impact of early-life stress on brain maturation and psychiatric risk.
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Cell type–specific pathology in human postmortem brain tissue, supported by one of the most active regional brain banks in the Southeast—the Alabama Brain Collection.
By combining human-based and translational research approaches, our schizophrenia research faculty—led by Drs. Adrienne Lahti, Shinichi Kano, Junghee Lee, Brandon Scott Pruett, and Kirsten Schoonover—are building an integrative model of psychosis that bridges molecular pathology with clinical presentation.
These efforts are laying the groundwork for more precise diagnostic tools and targeted therapeutic strategies to improve outcomes for individuals affected by these severe psychiatric disorders.
Leadership
Adrienne Lahti, M.D.
Program Lead
Heman E. Drummond Professor and Chair
Co-Director, Alabama Advanced Imaging Consortium
alahti@uab.edu