This request for supplemental funding under the Recovery Act Limited Competition for Revision Applications (NOT-OD-09-058) for grant PSO MH082999-01 addresses the topic of Translational Science: Innovative Targets and Models for Developing Treatments for Mental Disorders. This supplement has three primary purposes. First, funds will be requested to retain an outstanding graduate student whose funding is ending. Second, to enable the purchase of a new piece of equipment to enhance our ability to perform translational neuroscience research and third, to adapt a research approach from human studies to studies in a preclinical animal model of schizophrenia and to evaluate a novel therapeutic approach for alleviating social impairments of schizophrenia using this unique translational strategy. Specifically, this amendment focuses on expanding the basic neuroscience research being performed under Project 1 and Core 3 of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center for Intervention Development and Applied Research (CIDAR). Recent studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia are impaired in their ability to recognize and respond to facial affect displays are revealed in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task. One of the goals of the CIDAR is to examine oxytocin's ability to improve this ability in patients with schizophrenia and their family members. Ultrasonic vocalizations are responsible for transmitting emotional information between rodents. The new studies being proposed in this Competitive Revision will evaluate whether animals exposed to prenatal stress, which models schizophrenia, have deficits in emitting ultrasonic vocalizations or responding to vocalizations that are related to positive affective states or negative affective states, similar to Reading the Mind in the Eyes task. In addition, we will evaluate the effect of oxytocin in our animal model of schizophrenia and determine whether it improves the animals ability to recognize and respond to vocalizations reflecting affective states. These studies will inform the clinical studies being performed in the CIDAR and facilitate novel treatment development for schizophrenia
There are no effective treatments for the negative or cognitive symptoms associated with schizophrenia. This CIDAR is devoted to evaluating new therapeutic strategies for schizophrenia in a translational neuroscience setting. The new aim proposed herein will provide a more direct link between clinical and preclinical endpoints which will enhance identifying new treatments for this devastating disease
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