Dr. Daphne Holt, Psychiatry, 2004 Rappaport Research Scholar

Schizophrenia Functional Neuroimaging

As the 2004 Rappaport Scholar in Psychiatry, Dr. Daphne Holt has focused her research studies in the field of schizophrenia functional neuroimaging. Dr. Holt is currently conducting what she hopes will be the definitive functional magnetic resonance imaging study of the neural basis of emotional perception abnormalities in psychosis. The purpose of this research is to identify early markers of illness to allow the development of methods to prevent the onset or slow the progression of schizophrenia. She has evidence that psychotic symptoms are associated with errors in the evaluation of the emotional significance of objects, social interactions and events in the environment. These errors result from a tendency to misattribute emotional significance to neutral or ambiguous information—an “affective misattribution bias.”

To understand the changes in brain function that give rise to this abnormality, Dr. Holt and her team have developed a novel experimental paradigm specifically designed to elicit this bias. Using this paradigm and the spatiotemporal imaging techniques developed at the MGH Martinos Center in Charlestown, her team is attempting to identify the timing and the functional neuroanatomy of this affective misattribution bias in psychotic patients with schizophrenia. After they have characterized the pattern of brain activity associated with this bias in psychosis, they will then determine whether they can detect the identical pattern in at-risk individuals who later go on to develop schizophrenia.

Completing and publishing the results of these studies will allow Dr. Holt to become an established investigator in this field, with state-of-the-art-training in the techniques of functional MRI, cognitive neuroscience and clinical investigation in psychiatry.