SCHIZOPHRENIA

Schizophrenia, characterised by “positive”, “negative” and “cognitive” so-called symptoms, is a serious and disabling mental illness affecting approximately 1% of the population.
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DISEASE DESCRIPTION

Schizophrenia affects 21 million people in the world, roughly 7 in 1000. There are 600 000 cases in France. In 21 sick individuals, 9 are women and 12 are men.

Current therapies for schizophrenia use mainly neuroleptics, drugs helping to control “positive” symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations, and “negative” symptoms, such as affective and emotional blunting, but which are not effective against “cognitive” deficits, characterised by disorganised thoughts. In addition, up to one-third of patients do not respond to these therapies. New therapeutic targets are thus being actively sought to improve the treatment of this disease, and particularly cognitive deficits.

Institut du Cerveau – ICM RESPONSES

TOPICS AND RESEARCH TEAMS

Identify therapeutic targets for schizophrenia : Philippe Ravassard’s team.

CLINICAL RESEARCH

Quantitative assessment of apathy

Apathy, defined as a loss of motivation and interest, is a symptom frequently encountered in many pathologies such as depression, schizophrenia, but also Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Through the PRISM platform, an innovative project, EcoCapture, developed by Richard Levy aims to investigate apathy. Through body sensors, apathetic patients’ behaviours will be analysed in semi-ecological situation. The objective of this work is to use the collected data to put back to work people who have had a neurological deficit, with decision-making or behavioural disorders.