Montreal, April 23, 2025
The Douglas Mental Health University Institute is proud to announce that the Wellcome Trust has awarded $9.8 million to Dr. Lena Palaniyappan in support of the DIALOG initiative. This funding will support research into why some individuals with psychiatric conditions experience disorganized language, which can hinder their social interactions and increase stigmatization.
The DIALOG initiative, led by Dr. Palaniyappan, a researcher at the Douglas Research Centre and a professor of psychiatry at McGill University, and involves several international researchers, two individuals with lived experience of mental health issues, and an artist. The DIALOG project focuses on the patients’ everyday language use rather than traditional clinical assessments. By combining advanced analytical tools with neuroimaging data from more than 3000 patients, DIALOG aims to identify the brain dysfunctions underlying communication difficulties in mental illness.
The goal is to better target future treatments to improve the daily lives of those affected. One key aspect of this study is that it represents one of the first attempts in psychiatry to design clinical trials focused on a specific symptom—disorganized thinking—rather than a diagnosis.
– Dr. Palaniyappan.
The DIALOG project is a multidisciplinary effort that brings together experts in neuroscience, neuroimaging, linguistics, and information technology to develop innovative predictive models. This unique collaboration will not only enable the development of individualized treatments, but also create advanced diagnostic tools to improve the management of psychotic disorders worldwide.
The DIALOG initiative represents a collaboration among eight researchers:
Lena Palaniyappan (Douglas Mental Health University Institute took, Canada), Valentina Bambini (Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia, Italy), Neil Harrison (Cardiff University, United Kingdom), Tilo Kircher (Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany), Gina Kuperberg (Tufts University, United States), Susan Rossell (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia), Krish Singh (Cardiff University, United Kingdom) and Iris Sommer (University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands).
The DIALOG initiative also includes collaborators from various sites:
- Alban Voppel, PhD – McGill University
Senior postdoctoral researcher in Palaniyappan’s group in Montreal, brings substantial experience in NLP feature extraction, processing, and statistical modeling and analysis. Responsible for designing and coding computational linguistic pipelines, including development and evaluation of metrics. - Erik de Vries, PhD – Groningen University Medical Center
Full professor in translational molecular imaging with over 28 years of expertise in PET imaging of neurological and psychiatric diseases, will coordinate the PET imaging studies with co-applicant Sommer at the UMCG.
- Federico Frau, PhD – Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS di Pavia
Early-career postdoctoral fellow with a background in neurolinguistics and pragmatics. Will contribute to shaping the co-designed intervention program and the definition of relevant assessment measures centred on social
communication. - Frederike Stein, PhD – University of Marburg
Senior postdoctoral researcher with extensive expertise in large cross-diagnostic MRI datasets, will assist in compiling and quality control of legacy data, as well as curating and analyzing MRI data and clinical ratings. - Hashwin Ganesh, PhD (cand.)
Neuroscientist with lived-experience and family history of schizophrenia, has provided input on lived-expert engagement, attended weekly meetings, and reviewed the grant. Will continue to collaborate in patient/participant recruitment and study design and ensure that our research adds value and benefit patients and their families. - Hsi (Tiana) Wei – McGill University
Early career postdoctoral researcher with expertise in neurolinguistics and MEG analysis. Will assist in speech-related experimental design and oscillatory data analysis to associate MEG signals with language stimuli and speech performance. - Joanne Berry-Frith, MA – Loughborough University
Practice-based researcher and visual artist with works in notable collections like the V&A and Arts Council England. Will
assist with the project’s knowledge translation arm, creating visual data montages and art exhibits incorporating lived experience perspectives. Berry has previously collaborated with Palaniyappan in an art exhibition. - Lin Wang, PhD – Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Cognitive neuroscientist with extensive experience in experimental design and MEG data analysis, will contribute to the implementation of MEG experiments and provide expert advice on MEG data analysis and interpretation.
- Maria F. Alonso, PhD – Universidad de Valparaíso
Early-career researcher, will contribute by advising students and postdoctoral researchers in fMRI analysis, focusing on
dynamic causal modeling (DCM) and statistical parametric Bayesian methods.
- Marta Bosia, MD, PhD – Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
Associate Professor and Clinical Psychiatrist with demonstrated expertise in language and psychosis. Will contribute to the design and implementation of the PragmaCom+ remediation program with co-applicant Bambini.
- Michael Mackinley, PhD London Health Sciences Centre, Canada
Senior Research Associate in Palaniyappan’s group in London, Canada, brings extensive experience in coordinating recruitment for large longitudinal studies in language, functional outcome tracking and neuroimaging in psychosis. Will assist in pooling/analysing social functioning measures.
- Milica Miočević, PhD McGill University
Statistical Advisor experienced in mediation analysis and Bayesian statistics for social, health, and behavioural sciences, will assist/oversee statistical analysis, identifying causes of outcomes among many candidate predictors and WP2 statistical analyses, where large sets of confounders will be modelled using regularization techniques or Bayesian model averaging.
- Oli Delgaram-Nejad, PhD N/A
Has provided input on lived-expert engagement throughout grant preparation, attending all weekly meetings and reviewing the grant. He offers advice from a first hand experience perspective while also drawing on academic expertise in formal thought disorder. His contributions focus on speech elicitation procedures and supporting broader patient-public involvement. - Philip Sumner, PhD Swinburne University of Technology
Senior postdoctoral researcher, will contribute to the development and dissemination of scoping surveys and focus groups. Will assist in managing local data, coordinate/aid in compiling clinical rating across sites, monitor data quality, and support fMRI/DTI data analysis efforts.
- Philip Tibbo, MD Dalhousie University
Professor and Clinical Researcher in early intervention for psychosis, will create access to longitudinal clinical and speech
data, including imaging data. Will help with clinical consensus scores and consultation on cannabis and other substance effects.
- Sunny X. Tang, MD Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Psychiatrist and Researcher specializing in psychosis, language, and social processing, has collaborated extensively with group members in the past. Will contribute nuanced approaches to data-driven dimensions of disorganisation and social functioning, dissemination of scoping surveys.
- Sylvain Baillet, PhD Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University
Researcher and Director of the MEG Unit at The Neuro-Montreal, will oversee MEG data collection in Montreal. Will be responsible for MEG task design, data curation, development of project-specific analysis methods, and provide analytical software support and training through the Brainstorm app, which he co-developed.
For more information, contact:
Dr. Ranjini Garani, PhD
Project Coordinator
Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health
Douglas Mental Health University Institute
T-Pavillion-0106 | (514) 761-6131 x 6128
jini.garani@mail.mcgill.ca