This proposal for a Mentored Patient-focused Research Career Development award is submitted by Sandra S. Kindermann, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego. The objective of this 5-year academic award is to develop the candidate's expertise as a researcher, educator and clinician in general psychiatry with specialization in the differential effects of psychopharmacological agents on (1) functional brain systems, (2) treatment response, (3) selective attention and working memory performance; and (4) adaptive functioning in psychiatric patients. This award will build on the candidate's training, skills, abilities and knowledge in pharmacology, clinical psychology, neuropsychology, functional neuroimaging, clinical research and methods in geriatric psychiatry. The state objective will be achieved by means of a structured training plan, including relevant coursework and consultation with leading experts in the fields of psychopharmacology., geriatric psychiatry and brain imaging. The research plan compares the effects across time of haloperidol compared to risperidone on brain systems involved in selective attention and working memory, therapeutic response and level of adaptive functioning and their interrelationships. The study will provide preliminary cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons among older patients with schizophrenia receiving either haloperidol or risperidone who are prospectively categorized as functioning adaptively or not. The association between treatment response and brain function will also be examined separately for each treatment group. For the brain functioning analysis, key variables (accuracy and reaction time performance for the selective attention and working memory tasks) will be measured concurrently with region and intensity of brain activation time-locked to the experimental task. The study will use patients randomized to haloperidol or risperidone from an ongoing boule-blind study. Imaging, behavioral, symptom severity and adaptive functioning data will be acquired at Time 1 when a patient enters the randomized double-blind study and again at Time 2 after 12 weeks of treatment. This training program will assist the candidate in making the transition to independent investigator at the University of California, San Diego, and provide the foundation for a long-term research program focused on the interaction of psychopharmacology and brain function of older patients with schizophrenia.
| Kindermann, Sandra S; Brown, Gregory G; Zorrilla, Lisa Eyler et al. (2004) Spatial working memory among middle-aged and older patients with schizophrenia and volunteers using fMRI. Schizophr Res 68:203-16 |
| Kindermann, Sandra S; Dolder, Christian R; Bailey, Anne et al. (2002) Pharmacological treatment of psychosis and agitation in elderly patients with dementia: four decades of experience. Drugs Aging 19:257-76 |
