http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway have found new support for their theory that cannabis use causes a temporary cognitive breakdown in non-psychotic individuals, leading to long-term psychosis. In an fMRI study published this week in Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers found a different brain activity pattern in schizophrenia patients with previous cannabis use than in schizophrenic patients without prior cannabis use. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-cannabis-mimics-cognitive-weakness-schizophrenia.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:09:42 EST news271076971 (Medical Xpress) -- Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine may have discovered why certain drugs to treat schizophrenia are ineffective in some patients. Published online in Nature Neuroscience, the research will pave the way for a new class of drugs to help treat this devastating mental illness, which impacts one percent of the world's population, 30 percent of whom do not respond to currently available treatments. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-drug-schizophrenia.html Neuroscience Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:25:28 EST news264075897 (Medical Xpress) -- Antidepressive drugs reduce the mortality rate of schizophrenic patients, while treatment with bensodiazepines greatly increases it, especially as regards suicide. Giving several antipsychotics simultaneously, however, seems to have no effect at all. This according to a new study examining different drug combinations administered to patients with schizophrenia. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-suicides-antidepressive-treatment-schizophrenia.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 08 May 2012 06:20:57 EST news255676847 Working memory, which consists in the short-term retention and processing of information, depends on specific regions of the brain working correctly. This faculty tends to deteriorate in patients with schizophrenia, as it does in healthy aged subjects. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-memory-deficits-schizophrenic-patients-healthy.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:20:01 EST news249210260 Schizophrenia is a mental illness that seriously affects social interaction. Recent studies have shown that people with schizophrenia have difficulty in interpreting others' intentions. One of the causes has just been identified by researchers at the Centre de Recherches Cerveau et Cognition (France) and the Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive de Lyon (France). They showed that schizophrenic patients use past experience wrongly when trying to anticipate the intentions of others. These results are published in the online version of the journal Brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-schizophrenia-doesnt-social-interaction.html Neuroscience Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:57:07 EST news244194991 Researchers interested in the treatment of schizophrenia and dementia have clarified how antipsychotic drugs that target a complex of two receptors at the surface of cells in the brain work, according to a new study published online Nov. 23 in the journal Cell. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-method-advancing-antipsychotic-drugs.html Medical research Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:27:12 EST news241273612 (Medical Xpress) -- Two new independent research groups looking to find the genetic roots of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have found evidence of variations in regions of the human genome that appear to be associated with either or both neurological disorders. In the first study, a Chinese group led by Wei Huang, found variations in chromosome region 11 -- 11p11.2. The second group, led by Lin He and Yongyong Shi and comprised of an international team of researchers from both Asian and Western countries, found variations in two chromosome regions 8p12 and 1q24.2. Both teams have published their results in Nature Genetics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-unique-indentify-genetic-regions-schizophrenia.html Genetics Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:52:41 EST news239352736 For many poorly understood mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or autism, scientists have wished they could uncover what goes wrong inside the brain before damage ensues. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-reprogramming-skin-cells-brain-scientists.html Medical research Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:55:46 EST news237642920 Cognitive therapy has dynamically improved the most neurologically impaired, poorly functioning schizophrenic patients. For the first time, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that a psychosocial treatment can significantly improve daily functioning and quality of life in the lowest-functioning cases of schizophrenia. The study appears in the October 3 edition of Archives of General Psychiatry. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-severely-impaired-schizophrenics-dynamic-recovery.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:11:15 EST news236880663