Ashley Skilleter
University of NSW
Ian Scott PhD Scholarship 2011
Mental Illness
In 2007 I completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland, majoring in Neuroscience. I went on to complete my Honours year in the Cognitive Neuroscience laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute, UQ, in 2008. My honours project employed Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, a safe technique for transiently disrupting human cortical function in vivo, to investigate the hypothesis that discrete regions of the human posterior parietal cortex play a crucial role in regulating the temporal limits of selective attention.
I then worked for two years as a Research Assistant at the Queensland Brain Institute, where I was involved in designing and running a number of behavioural and neuropsychological research experiments, with a focus on how the brain selectively attends to stimuli within the environment.
Currently I am undertaking a PhD at the University of New South Wales, in conjunction with NeuRa (Neuroscience Research Australia). Under the supervision of Dr Thomas Weickert and Professor Cyndi Shannon Weickert, I will determine the extent to which fronto-temporal tDCS will improve positive (principally auditory hallucinations) and negative symptoms, as well as cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia.
I am aiming to forge a career in neuropsychiatric research, with a particular focus on developing interventions and treatments for mental disorders, and understanding the underlying brain mechanisms involved.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
A randomised controlled trial of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to reduce auditory hallucinations and enhance cognitive function in schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that is characterized by positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, and negative symptoms such as lack of initiative, avolition, and blunted affect. Cognitive dysfunction is now also considered a core feature of schizophrenia, with deficits in the domains of executive control and working memory often manifesting before the onset of other symptoms.
My project will recruit a cohort of participants diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and apply a relatively new brain stimulation technique, transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to address auditory hallucinations and residual impairments in cognition and negative symptoms, all of which are non-responsive to existing antipsychotic medication treatments.
The aimis to determine the extent to which cathodal tDCS of the temporal cortex can reduce auditory hallucinations, and anodal tDCS of the prefrontal cortex can induce positive changes in cognition, in people with schizophrenia who are concurrently taking antipsychotic medication. Symptoms and cognitive function will be evaluated at the beginning and periodically throughout treatment, and the effects of tDCS on brain structure and function will be assessed by means of MRI scans pre-and post-treatment. Finally, the use of a placebo-controlled design will allow us to draw conclusions with regard to the true efficacy of tDCS.
We believe that if a course of tDCS improves cognition and symptoms in people with schizophrenia, then in the future, regular treatment protocols may be devised to reverse the cognitive deficits and reduce the positive and negative symptoms associated with the disease.