Mental health week 2015: Meditation for mindfulness vs meditation in religion or spiritual practice

What effect does the type of meditation have
on your brain?

Dr Neil Bailey from MAPrc has co-authored a study which explores whether mindfulness meditation has the same effect on the brain as meditation in spiritual practice.

According to the study, individuals who practise meditation religiously or spiritually and those who practise mindfulness meditation often report a greater sense of compassion, wellbeing, feeling of wholeness, decreased anxiety, and faster recovery from mental illness.

The report examines neuroimaging research that has focused on groups of meditating individuals, groups who engage in religious/spiritual practices, and research that has examined groups who perform both practices together, in an attempt to assess whether the effects on people's mindfulness are the same.

Supporting pregnant women and new mothers with mental illness

Ms Heather Gilbert

Heather Gilbert co-ordinates The National Register of Antipsychotic Medication in Pregnancy (NRAMP), which is now in its 10th year.

She is undertaking a PhD at MAPrc, part time, supervised by Professor Jayashri Kulkarni and Dr Caroline Gurvich. Her PhD is embedded within NRAMP,  and is planned to add to this important work.

Heather's PhD topic is 'Developing a new model of support for pregnant women and new mothers with mental illness'. Her first paper has been published, and is about the special issues facing pregnant women with mental illnesses, increasing clinical awareness, encouraging risk assessment and promoting management planning, by using an integrated model of care in support of women during pregnancy and in early motherhood.

Reference: Gilbert H, Gurvich C, Kulkarni J (2015) Special Issues for Pregnant Women with Mental Illness. J Nurs Care 4:280. doi: 10.4172/2167-1168.1000280

Mental health in the media with MAPrc

Prof Paul Fitzgerald explaining about

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

ABC Catalyst: Brain stimulation, broadcast 6 October 2015

Dr Maryanne Demasi explores magnetic transcranial stimulation or TMS with Professor Paul Fitzgerald. In the case of treating depression, the magnetic field is applied to the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most responsible for happiness. Paul  says, "We tend to find about 45% of the patients we treat get a really substantial antidepressant response. Another 20% or so get benefit without it perhaps being life-changing. And about 35%, the patients don't respond at all."

Radio 3AW Talking health 4 October 2015: Professor Jayashri Kulkarni on 'borderline personality disorder' with Dr Sally Cockburn, how the term was invented 80 years ago and doesn't really help or explain the disorder (they don't quite have psychosis, they don't have depression, so it must be 'personality'!). Prof Kulkarni says that 85% of individuals diagnosed with the disorder had an early life trauma. They don't have a good internal sense of who they are. The major and most dangerous symptom is self harm.

Schizophrenia and working memory

Researchers at MAPrc have published a pair of research papers providing crucial proof-of-principle for a new treatment for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.  Cognitive impairment is a core symptom of schizophrenia, occurring in greater than 80% of patients, and results in considerable functional disability. Despite the prevalence and significant burden associated with these symptoms, treatment options are few and of limited effectiveness.

Novel form of brain stimulation enhances working memory

Dr Kate Hoy, lead researcher on the TBS study

MAPrc researchers have recently published a world first finding in Cerebral Cortex.

The paper, lead authored by Dr Kate Hoy, investigated the use of a novel form of brain stimulation to enhance working memory.  Impairments in cognition, such as difficulties in attention and memory, are core symptoms of a number of psychiatric and neurological conditions. These difficulties greatly affect patient’s ability to engage in day-to-day life and there are currently no effective treatments.

Mental health week 2015: Schizophrenia and mirror system function

MAPrc student Dr Sophie Andrews supervised by Dr Kate Hoy, Professor Paul Fitzgerald, and Dr Richard Thomson recently authored a study which looked at patients with schizophrenia and whether their mirror neuron systems are impaired.

Dysfunctional mirror neuron systems have been proposed to contribute to the social cognitive deficits observed in schizophrenia. A few studies have explored mirror systems in schizophrenia using various techniques such as TMS (levels of motor resonance) or EEG (levels of mu suppression), with mixed results.

This study used a novel multimodal approach (eg: concurrent TMS and EEG) to further investigate mirror systems and social cognition in schizophrenia. Nineteen individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 19 healthy controls participated.

The study found that the schizophrenia group showed significant deficits in facial affect recognition and higher level theory of mind, compared to healthy controls. A significant positive relationship was revealed between mu suppression and motor resonance for the overall sample, indicating concurrent validity of these measures. Levels of mu suppression and motor resonance were not significantly different between groups.

These findings indicate that in stable outpatients with schizophrenia, mirror system functioning is intact. Therefore, their social cognitive difficulties may be caused by alternative pathophysiology.

Reference (full study): Andrews SC, Enticott PG, Hoy KE, Thomson RH, Fitzgerald PB. No evidence for mirror system dysfunction in schizophrenia from a multimodal TMS/EEG study. Psychiatry Research 228:3,pp.431–440, 30 Aug 2015.

Congratulations to MAPrc students on completing their PhDs

Congratulations to Melissa Kirkovski and Eric Tan from Monash Alfred Psychiatry research centre who have both recently completed their PhDs.

Melissa, who was supervised by Professor Paul Fitzgerald and Associate Professor Peter Enticott, completed her thesis which looked at gender differences in the brain basis of Autism Spectrum Disorders. She enjoyed working with a great research team and being exposed to a variety of different types of research in mental health.

Eric's research explored the origins, causes and impacts of speech problems in schizophrenia and was particularly interested in how these speech problems impact a patient’s quality of life. Eric was supervised by Dr Susan Rossell and Dr Gregory Yelland. His other research interests include other language disorders, memory, cognition, quality of life and early/pre-psychosis phenomena.