Mental Health

The neurobiology of schizophrenia remains unclear. In general, neurons in our brain communicate through electrical currents, which are either excitatory or inhibitory. Excitatory currents are those that prompt one neuron to share information with the next, while inhibitory currents reduce the possibility that such a transfer will take place.

It is thought that there is an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory brain activity (E/I balance) for patients with schizophrenia. However, the link between this imbalance and symptoms/treatment is not well understood.

A promising approach is to examine how E/I imbalance affects the brain’s ability to form 'cognitive maps' - internal representations that help us interpret our surroundings and guide our behaviour. One way to test this is to use language-based tasks and functional brain imaging, revealing how the brain extracts meaning from sensory data.

Dr Matthew Nour from the University of Oxford will use a new computational language paradigm (based on AI models like ChatGPT), in combination with brain imaging, to investigate cognitive mapping signatures in people with schizophrenia.

In Study 1, Dr Nour and his team will assess if cognitive mapping can be enhanced by memantine, a pro-cognitive medication. 30 individuals with schizophrenia and 30 controls will complete language tasks during brain scanning (magnetoencephalography), both under placebo and memantine. Neuroimaging analysis will be used to decode semantic signals in brain activity.

In Study 2, they will apply computational language analyses to gauge cognitive map representations from language behaviour alone, in a large (n=1200) general population study, examining correlations with psychiatric traits.

This research will rigorously test the cognitive mapping hypothesis of schizophrenia and provide new tools to study cognition in other psychiatric conditions.