Projects
There are a number of projects currently in operation at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre
- The five year task of the ASRB is to recruit 2000 people with schizophrenia and 2000 people without schizophrenia from all across Australia.
- One of the key purposes of the Bioinformatics Development Project is to integrate behavioural, cognitive, neurophysiological and molecular biological data across a range of psychiatric illnesses.
- This research is using cutting-edge neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and molecular genetic techniques to identify biological markers of risk for psychosis and to investigate the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to the development and course of psychotic disorders.
- This research shows that individuals vulnerable to depression respond differently to social threat information (i.e., threats of humiliation, defeat, and rejection), than individuals with no history of depression.
- This study aims to use eye movement tasks to look at the patterns of Blood Oxygen Level Dependant (BOLD) functional MRI activity in the brains of young people at ultra-high risk of psychosis.
- The study will investigate one of the key underlying causes of the onset of mental disorder in adolescence, namely difficulties with regulating moods and emotions.
- This study is using structural and functional neuroimaging techniques to examine the neurobiological correlates of maladaptive responses to socially threatening situations that are potentiated by depressed mood states.
- This is a joint project of the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre (MNC) and the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE) at the University of Melbourne, funded by the AE Rowden White Foundation.
- Cannabis is the most widely abused illicit drug and its early use by adolescents has been associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes, including cognitive impairments, poor socio-occupational functioning and mental health problems.
- Together with members of ORYGEN and Barwon Health, we are conducting a detailed investigation of the neuroprotective effects of quetiapine, which has traditionally been used as an antipsychotic, but whose efficacy as a mood-stabilizing agent is being increasingly recognized, and which may provide an effective alternative to lithium.
- The aim of this study is to comprehensively examine the characteristics and extent of neuroanatomical abnormalities (as measured by MRI) in a large number of inhalant abusing adolescents.
- The aim of this study is to examine whether resource-oriented music therapy helps psychiatric patients with low motivation for therapy to improve negative symptoms and other health-related outcomes
- In this project we will use brain imaging and neurophysiological techniques, as well as tests of cognition (thinking) to assess the relationship between the brain’s processing of drug cues and the integrity of the brain’s inhibitory system (i.e. your mental brakes) in opiate addiction.