Developmental Psychiatry

Our vision is to improve the prediction and characterization of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and contribute to developing new prevention and personalized treatment strategies and identifying new treatment targets.

Our mission is to perform multi-disciplinary neuroscience research and use multi-modal neuroimaging techniques to elucidate the complex relationships between brain, body, cognition and mental health and how these relationships are modulated by environmental and biological factors.

Background

Psychiatric disorders such as major depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are globally among the leading causes of years lived with disability. Many psychiatric disorders have their onset in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood. Neuroscientific research, driven by the advances in vivo brain imaging methods, established that psychiatric disorders are disorders of the brain. Nevertheless, diagnosis is still largely based on clinical assessment and diagnostic categories are highly heterogeneous with respect to symptomatology and disease progression. Furthermore, available treatments are often generic and not tailored to the individual.

Our research

Our neuroscientific research is highly interdisciplinary. In close collaboration with our clinical partners, we employ state of the art multimodal brain imaging and electrophysiological techniques to elucidate, characterize and monitor the neurobiological and neurocognitive signatures of risk, resilience and disease in different at-risk and neuropsychiatric populations.

We are currently involved in the following projects:

Danish high risk and resilience study (VIA)

The Danish High Risk and Resilience Study – VIA (viaundersoegelsen.org) – is a national longitudinal study of 522 children at age seven (VIA7) born to parents with or without a diagnosis of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. “VIA” is the Latin word for road and describes the overall purpose of the project to investigate the developmental path of children with vulnerabilities. At DRCMR we perform EEG and MRI as part of the VIA Brainmap group. See more here: www.drcmr.dk/via.

Treatment Effects of Family-based Cognitive Therapy in Children and Adolescents with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – TECTO Brain Imaging

TECTO is large collaborative study with national and international partners led by Anne Katrine Pagsberg from the Research Unit - Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre (CAMHC), Mental Health Services, Capital Region, that combines a randomized clinical trial and longitudinal case-control design to elucidate how neural, cognitive, emotional, and neuroendocrine factors moderate and mediate family based cognitive behavioral therapy (FCBT) response in pediatric patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). TECTO is the first large random clinical trial (RCT) in pediatric OCD to include neuroimaging. Characterizing the neural underpinnings of response to FCBT is essential for improving treatment efficacy and identifying potential new treatment targets. See more here: https://www.drcmr.dk/tecto

FAMILY: understanding and predicting the intergenerational transmission of mental illness

As part of the VIA Brainmap study, we are part of the EU funded project FAMILY. FAMILY (https://family-project.eu) is a multidisciplinary initiative that aims to improve the lives of mentally ill persons and their families. FAMILY will build models to predict whether mental illness will be transmitted across generations or not. Furthermore, FAMILY addresses key ethical and social issues raised by risk prediction for clinical use, such as the right not to know and the risk of stigma.

SOCO: A study to determine classifiers associated with two aspects of social cognition relevant to patients with schizophrenia and autism: Mentalizing and Self-Referential processing

SOCO is a newly started collaborative study between DRCMR and the child and adolescent psychiatry unit (CAMHC) with the lead of James Blair (CAMHC). The study includes 180 typically developing adolescents in the age range 14-17 years. The study will later on include adolescents with psychosis with the goal to develop new bio-markers of the neural systems implicated in psychosis-relevant aspects of social cognition.

Research Group hjemmesidebillede

Multimodal brain imaging and electrophysiological techniques characterize and monitor neurobiological and neurocognitve underpinnings of risk, resilience and mental disease across the lifespan. Bodily functions and fitness are assessed. Lightning bolts: genetic predispositions, prenatal events and postnatal stressors are thought to increase individuals’ vulnerability to stressors that often impact during maturation.

Selected Publications

Ver Loren van Themaat AH, Hemager N, Korsgaard Johnsen L, Klee Burton B, Ellersgaard D, Christiani C, Brandt J, Gregersen M, Falkenberg Krantz M, Søborg Spang K, Søndergaard A, Møllegaard Jepsen JR, Elgaard Thorup AA, Siebner HR, Plessen KJ, Nordentoft M, Vangkilde S. 2021. Development of visual attention from age 7 to age 12 in children with familial high risk for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia Research. 228:327-335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2020.12.031

Taylor JA, Larsen KM, Dzafic I, Garrido MI. 2021. Predicting subclinical psychotic-like experiences on a continuum using machine learning. NeuroImage. 241:1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118329

Dzafic I, Larsen KM, Darke H, Pertile H, Carter O, Sundram S, Garrido MI. 2021. Stronger Top-Down and Weaker Bottom-Up Frontotemporal Connections During Sensory Learning Are Associated With Severity of Psychotic Phenomena. Schizophrenia Bulletin. 47(4):1039-1047. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbaa188

Taylor JA, Larsen KM, Garrido MI. 2020. Multi-dimensional predictions of psychotic symptoms via machine learning. Human Brain Mapping. 41(18):5151-5163. Available from: 10.1002/hbm.25181

Larsen KM, Dzafic I, Darke H, Pertile H, Carter O, Sundram S, Garrido MI. 2020. Aberrant connectivity in auditory precision encoding in schizophrenia spectrum disorder and across the continuum of psychotic-like experiences. Schizophrenia Research. 222:185-194. Available from: 10.1016/j.schres.2020.05.061

Johnsen LK, Ver Loren van Themaat AH, Larsen KM, Burton BK, Baaré WFC, Madsen KS, Nordentoft M, Siebner HR, Plessen KJ. 2020. Alterations in Task-Related Brain Activation in Children, Adolescents and Young Adults at Familial High-Risk for Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder - A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 11:1-16. Available from: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00632

Maigaard K, Nejad AB, Andersen KW, Herz DM, Hagstrøm J, Pagsberg AK, Skov L, Siebner HR, Plessen KJ. 2019. A superior ability to suppress fast inappropriate responses in children with Tourette syndrome is further improved by prospect of reward. Neuropsychologia. 131:342-352. Available from: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.05.012

Larsen KM, Mørup M, Birknow MR, Fischer E, Olsen L, Didriksen M, Baaré WFC, Werge TM, Garrido MI, Siebner HR. 2019. Individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome show intact prediction but reduced adaptation in responses to repeated sounds: Evidence from Bayesian mapping. NeuroImage. Clinical. 22:1-10. Available from: 10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101721

Hagstrøm J, Spang KS, Christiansen BM, Maigaard K, Vangkilde S, Esbjørn BH, Jepsen JRM, Plessen KJ. 2019. The Puzzle of Emotion Regulation: Development and Evaluation of the Tangram Emotion Coding Manual for Children. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 10:1-10. Available from: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00723