Psychotic disorders

Recent research highlights inflammation's pivotal role in the etiology of psychotic disorders, emphasizing the potential of inflammatory markers as diagnostic and prognostic tools. This study aimed to elucidate the differential profiles of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio(NLR), monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio(MLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio(PLR), and systemic immune-inflammatory index(SII) in schizophrenia versus acute psychosis. Conducting a retrospective analysis, we included 126 patients from Prof. Dr. Alexandru Obregia Hospital in Bucharest, divided into two cohorts: 67 patients diagnosed wi

Tremendous progress has been made in treating psychotic disorders, although available pharmacotherapy remains insufficient. Symptoms related to reality misinterpretation are key for diagnosis but challenging in preclinical research. In humans, the Mirror-Gazing test has been employed to examine abnormal self-experience and to predict a risk of schizophrenia manifestation. The lack of corresponding animal methods impedes the development of novel drugs for early antipsychotic interventions. We established a task to evaluate anomalous subjective experience in rats using a mirror test. Initially,

Hallucinations are a core symptom of psychotic disorders and have traditionally been difficult to study biologically. We developed a new behavioral computational approach to measure hallucinations-like perception in humans and mice alike. Using targeted neural circuit manipulations, we identified a causal role for striatal dopamine in mediating hallucination-like perception. Building on this, we currently investigate the neural and immunological upstream regulators of these dopaminergic circuits with the goal to identify new biological treatment targets for psychosis

Psychotic disorders are characterized by heterogeneity in etiopathology, clinical presentation and individual trajectory, complicating diagnosis and treatment. Despite the increasing amount of studies investigating significant alterations, the mechanisms underlying the emergence and progression of these disorders remains unclear. It is therefore fundamental to improve our ability to differentiate between clinical subgroups and to move towards a more personalised approach. Here, we aim to highlight critical neural correlates in early stages of psychosis, and to identify relevant biomarkers corr

Psychotic disorders are devastating conditions without any mechanistic treatment available. One major hurdle in the biological study of psychosis is the challenge of rigorously probing this condition in pre-clinical animal models. The goal of our research is to develop and exploit innovative frameworks for the study of psychosis in mice. In our present work, where we developed a cross-species computational psychiatry approach to probe hallucination-like perception. This enabled us to directly relate human and mouse behavior, and to demonstrate and dissect the causal role of striatal dopamine i