FRQ-Santé funds numerous Douglas researchers and students

Many people suffering from psychiatric disorders (depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia) have cognitive dysfunctions (difficulties with memory and attention) which can have a profound impact on their daily lives. Poor cognitive health is due to cerebral abnormalities and leads to clinical symptoms (depression, psychosis, etc.) as well as a low level of functioning (academic and professional success, etc.). Computerized (i.e. digital) cognitive tools have immense potential to improve our understanding of cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders, as they offer increased precision, standardization and automation, as well as new possibilities for harnessing cognition in a variety of contexts (from smartphone apps on the move to task-based brain imaging).

Our research uses state-of-the-art digital technologies and brain imaging techniques to better understand and promote cognitive and brain health in people with psychiatric disorders. Through three main themes, we will (1) develop new tools to improve the way cognition is measured, use these tools to (2) understand how cognition fluctuates over days, weeks and months and how it relates to symptoms and environmental factors (e.g. sleep and exercise), and (3) identify the brain mechanisms behind cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders.

Our new digital tools will measure cognition in different contexts, from smartphones and tablets to brain imaging devices such as magnetic resonance imaging. We’ll be sharing these tools openly with the wider community to get input from experts, people with experience of mental illness and the general public. By sharing our measurements openly, we will be able to use them in research, clinical and educational contexts for greater impact. Using these new technologies, we will conduct studies to examine how cognition fluctuates over time, how it relates to clinical symptoms and environmental factors (such as sleep and exercise), and how it is driven by the brain. Studies using retrospective data will also be used to support this work. Our research will provide a better understanding of cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders in order to predict symptoms and inform healthcare professionals about critical therapeutic windows.

Approximately 500,000 Canadians are currently living with dementia, and this number could rise to 912,000 by 2030. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, characterized by memory impairment. However, other cognitive functions such as language and socio-emotional skills can also be affected in Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which often occurs before the age of 60, mainly affects behavior and language. These two areas, although studied separately, are in fact intimately linked. Language is primarily a social function, and socio-emotional cues are often transmitted via language. The aim of this research program is to better understand these interactions in order to improve the detection and diagnosis of dementia.

The research program has three main focuses.

Axis 1: Anomia as a marker for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
Anomia, or word retrieval difficulty, is one of the most common cognitive complaints in the elderly, often perceived as a normal part of aging. However, this difficulty could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease. This first line of research aims to demonstrate that subjective complaints related to anomia are in fact associated with specific biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease. Data from several existing databases will be used to establish these links. The study also aims to evaluate new digital language tests capable of predicting disease biomarkers in two Quebec cohorts.

Axis 2: Language and socio-emotional disorders in frontotemporal dementia.
Frontotemporal dementia is a rarer and less well understood form of dementia. This second line of research focuses on identifying language and socio-emotional disorders specific to each variant of frontotemporal dementia, both at the onset of the disease and as it progresses. The aim is also to better understand the brain mechanisms responsible for these disorders, using advanced brain imaging techniques.

Axis 3: Social factors that can influence language and socio-emotional disorders, and their impact on everyday life.
Cognitive decline does not occur in a vacuum. It is influenced by the social environment, and in turn affects daily life. This third line of research explores how social factors such as level of education, occupational complexity and multilingualism influence language and socio-emotional abilities. The aim is also to better understand the impact of these disorders on people’s social lives, in order to tailor care to individual needs.

This four-year research program aims to integrate knowledge of language and socio-emotional skills in the context of dementia, while taking into account social and neurobiological aspects, in order to improve the clinical management of patients.

Schizophrenia, one of the most persistent and disabling illnesses, results in over 2 million hospital days per year and costs Canada over $6 billion annually. Despite advances in treatment, only 15% of patients are employed, and disability outcomes have shown little improvement over time. Current antipsychotic drugs focus mainly on voices and delusions, and fail to relieve other key symptoms such as disorganized thinking and social withdrawal. These are non-psychotic symptoms that have a significant impact on functional recovery. We can’t study non-psychotic symptoms in animals, because they don’t talk or socialize in the same way as we do. We need reliable methods to study these symptoms so that we can develop new therapies.

My clinical research program, integrated into several international multidisciplinary consortia, spans linguistics to specialized brain imaging and is well placed to meet this challenge. The main objective of my research program is to determine how non-psychotic symptoms develop. In doing so, we want to be able to predict, prevent and intervene at an early stage of schizophrenia. To achieve this, my approach revolves around three themes: (1) improving the measurement of non-psychotic symptoms using artificial intelligence applied to verbal production and language and demonstrating its usefulness in predicting relapses of psychosis, (2) using advanced brain imaging to clarify the physical, chemical and biological processes in the brain that give rise to these symptoms, and (3) identifying very early symptoms of severe mental illness using multiple modalities of biological, behavioural and emotional markers in a cohort of young people in need (from age 9 upwards).

My academic-clinical direction focuses on bringing neuroscience knowledge to bear in developing and testing therapies on a global scale, concentrating on young people’s mental health. Over time, this approach will gradually change the current practice of selecting treatments on the basis of subjective impressions by doctors to an objective measure of a person’s problems based on their own words, and the use of prevention approaches that are specific and tailored to the individual.

Addiction is a common but little-studied psychiatric disorder, affecting a large proportion (~22%) of Canadians over the course of their lives. Although addiction is a leading cause of preventable death, disability, injury and social problems, treatment outcomes for people with addiction are poor. In other words, many people who try to stop using addictive substances relapse. This may be because some addictive substances have no approved medication (e.g. cocaine, cannabis). Although other addictive substances have medications available, such as nicotine, their effectiveness in maintaining abstinence is often limited. As a result, better treatments for addiction-related disorders are urgently needed.

My research program focuses on understanding the behaviors, brain patterns and mental health aspects associated with addictive substances, with the aim of finding new and better treatments for addiction. Specifically, we employ innovative experiments to better characterize the consequences of addiction, and investigate how they may differ between men and women. We are also examining why certain addictive substances may be consumed together (e.g. cannabis and tobacco) and how this may affect a person’s ability to quit these substances. Finally, we are investigating whether tobacco and cocaine dependence is associated with deregulation of a specific brain system.

Collectively, we believe this work can help guide the development of new, more effective treatments for the millions of Canadians suffering from addiction.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterized by extreme mood swings, from depressive to manic phases. People suffering from BD may have difficulty communicating; in fact, to exchange with someone, you need to understand the emotions being expressed (e.g., joy or sadness) and have an idea of what that person may be thinking. This is called social cognition, and having poorer skills in this area makes daily life more difficult, with a negative impact on well-being and social relationships. Proper assessment of social cognition is therefore central, and requires tasks that are adapted to the population, accessible to as many people as possible, and closer to real-life situations by integrating the social reality of individuals living with TBI (e.g. in relation to work). Once better defined, these difficulties will be better managed, with more targeted interventions that will be accessible from a distance. The aim of this program is therefore to better assess and treat the social cognition difficulties of people living with TBI, in order to improve their well-being.

This program has three objectives.
(1) Improve the assessment of social cognition using a task based on virtual reality technologies. A task using a virtual reality environment will be created based on scenarios encountered in everyday life. Once finalized, acceptability and feasibility will be tested, as well as differences between clinical and non-clinical groups.
(2) Disentangle the potential effects of health-related social factors, such as employment, on social cognition skills. To this end, people living with bipolar disorder, currently employed, and followed at the Douglas Outpatient Bipolar Disorders Clinic, will be recruited for a repeated assessment at two months, focusing in particular on working conditions, interactions with colleagues, self-esteem, stigmatization, as well as social cognition.
(3) Propose innovative interventions targeting social cognition for people living with BD in order to improve their daily lives. For this project, two interventions will be proposed (Action-Based Cognitive Remediation and Brains@Work). The acceptability, appropriateness and feasibility of the interventions will be tested, as well as their effectiveness on the social functioning, quality of life and well-being of participants.

A better understanding of the impairment of social cognition in TB will enable this knowledge to be integrated into clinical programs, with a view to developing learning health systems in mental health.

“The world is yours to discover.” This common expression suggests that we are free to choose from the many options the world has to offer. Although this sounds relatively straightforward, the processes by which our brains take into account the possibilities open to us to choose the best course of action are still largely unknown. The aim of the Tritsch laboratory is to better understand how we learn from our past experiences in order to better inform and motivate our future actions.

We are focusing on two molecules essential to learning and motivation: dopamine and acetylcholine. We seek to answer three broad categories of questions: how does dopamine affect brain cell activity (Research Focus 1), how does acetylcholine enrich the actions of dopamine on the brain and behavior (Research Focus 2), and how does the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons compromise brain cell activity and behavior in Parkinson’s disease (Research Focus 3)? To answer these fundamental questions, we are using several state-of-the-art experimental methods to record and manipulate the electrical activity of brain cells in laboratory mice.

Our long-term goal is to identify new approaches to treating Parkinson’s disease, as well as learning and motivational disorders.

The themes are chosen by the Teen Council of the Centre d’excellence en santé mentale des jeunes, which brings together young people from all over Quebec who are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues. A new episode each month (with a well-deserved break during the summer vacations!) tells the story of a teenager who is wondering about a mental health issue. They talk to researchers and mental health professionals to try to get answers – but do not always get them!

The aim is above all to open up a dialogue. What exactly is mental health? Should I blame my parents if I have problems? Should I limit my screen time? Why am I concerned about the planet when adults aren’t? Produced in collaboration with the Douglas Research Centre, the Douglas Foundation and the Jeunes en Tête et Douglas Foundation, as well as the Papageno youth suicide prevention research team and the Observatoire pour la santé et l’éducation des enfants, this podcast is produced by a team of university students passionate about mental health, a scientist and a documentary artist.

Driven by the voices of young people and a passion for scientific communication, the series’ mission is to inform, raise awareness, make people think… and perhaps give a little hope.