Project Summary

Michal Lavidor, Ph.D. (Independent Investigator 2007) of Bar-Ilan University, will apply a brain-research methodology called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)to study and possibly help to relieve the impaired emotion-cue decoding in patients with schizophrenia. What is called emotional prosody is a crucial linguistic function encompassing nonverbal aspects of language necessary for recognizing and conveying emotions and for successful social integration. In schizophrenia, emotional prosody is impaired. Antipsychotic medication does not appear to have a strong or consistent effect on this deficit, the neural basis of which remains little understood. Dr. Lavidor will apply TMS to schizophrenia patients so as to directly probe the neural basis of this linguistic emotion-decoding deficit. He will also try to determine if TMS can improve patients’ ability to perform this vital social cognition. Understanding the neural basis of language and its disruption in schizophrenia could provide a guide for diagnosis, subtyping, treatment and future research on the disorder.

Program Area: SCHIZOPHRENIA/PSYCHOTIC DISORDERS

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