Participants sought: Hearing voices (auditory verbal hallucinations)

Participants are sought for study on auditory verbal hallucinations in relation to mood in bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.

Have you heard voices when no one else was nearby? To the person hearing the voice, it seems like someone is talking to them, but others around them do not actually hear the voice. These experiences tend to be more common amongst people with a mental illness, but also affect a proportion of people without a mental illness. Please find out more from the study coordinator, Dr Wei Lin Toh:

• Contact email:  wei.lin.toh@monash.edu
• Contact phone number:  (03) 9076 5172
• Website link: www.maprc.org.au/cognitive-neuropsychiatry

Alfred HealthLink newsletter 2015 Autumn issue: TBI, Asthma, Anaesthesia, Bipolar & more

Alfred Health produces a regular newsletter, back issues of which are housed at: www.alfred.org.au/News.aspx?ID=469.

The current issue's highlights include:

• Asthma breakthrough (Prof Bruce Thompson, Department of Allergy, Immunology and Respiratory medicine)
• Monitoring healthy recovery after surgery (Dr Mark Shulman, Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine)
• Brain imaging, bipolar and family (Dr Tamsyn van Rheenen, MAPrc)
• Global effort in brain injury research (Prof Jamie Cooper)

Enquiries to Public Affairs team at Alfred Health on 03 9076 2266 or publicaffairs@alfred.org.au

Volumetric, cortical thickness and white matter integrity alterations in bipolar disorder type I and II

Dr Jerome Maller 

MAPrc researcher Dr Jerome Maller recently published an article which looks at volumetric, cortical thickness and white matter integrity alterations in bipolar disorder type I and II.

Social media use a possible index for bipolar relapse

beyondblue have made a research grant of $72,000 over 12 months to Prof Paul Fitzgerald (pictured), Monash Alfred Psychiatry research centre (MAPrc) and medical student Rowan Miller, to investigate whether a bipolar patient’s use of social media can be used as an indicator of prodromal [very early] symptoms before the onset of a relapse of bipolar disorder (both manic and depressive relapses).

Participants sought: Bipolar disorder and genetics

MAPrc research study on Bipolar Disorder and genetics is identifying endophenotypes, the expression of neurocognitive and social cognitive enhancements or deficits, which will aid in identifying specific genes. Participants must have a first-degree relative with bi-polar disorder but not have the disease, be between the ages of 18-65, not be pregnant, substance-dependent, have any vision or hearing impairment, or difficulty with spoken English.