In a new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), people with schizophrenia showed greater brain activity during tests that induce a brief, mild form of delusional thinking. This effect wasn't seen in a comparison group without schizophrenia.

The study appears in the December issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Adolescents diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses appear to show greater decreases in gray matter volume and increases in cerebrospinal fluid in the frontal lobe compared to healthy adolescents without a diagnosis of psychosis, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Progressive loss of brain gray matter (GM) has been reported in childhood-onset schizophrenia; however, it is uncertain whether these changes are shared by pediatric patients with different psychoses," the authors write as background information in the study.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that DNA stays too tightly wound in certain brain cells of schizophrenic subjects. The findings suggest that drugs already in development for other diseases might eventually offer hope as a treatment for schizophrenia and related conditions in the elderly.

The research, now available online in the new Nature journal, Translational Psychiatry, shows the deficit is especially pronounced in younger people, meaning treatment might be most effective early on at minimizing or even reversing symptoms of schizophrenia, a potentially devastating mental disorder associated with hallucinations, delusions, and emotional difficulties, among other problems.

Although many mental illnesses are uniquely human, animals sometimes exhibit abnormal behaviors similar to those seen in humans with psychological disorders. Such behaviors are called endophenotypes. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that mice lacking a gene that encodes a particular protein found in the synapses of the brain display a number of endophenotypes associated with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders.

The new findings appear in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, with Mary Kennedy, the Allen and Lenabelle Davis Professor of Biology at Caltech, as the senior author.

Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, according to a new brain imaging study by Yale researchers.

Meditation's ability to help people stay focused on the moment has been associated with increased happiness levels, said Judson A. Brewer, assistant professor of psychiatry and lead author of the study published the week of Nov. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Understanding how meditation works will aid investigation into a host of diseases, he said.

Significant progress has been made in understanding the genetic risk factors underlying psychiatric disease. Recent studies have identified common genetic mutations conferring modest risk and rare variants comprising significant risk. One example of a rare cause of psychiatric disorders is the Disrupted in Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) gene, first identified in a large Scottish pedigree displaying schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

New research identifies the brain chemicals and circuits involved in mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, giving potential new directions to their treatment. In addition, research with children shows that early-life depression and anxiety changes the structure of the developing brain. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2011, the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

One in 17 Americans suffer from a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder, making it one of the leading causes of disability. Yet science is only beginning to understand the underlying physical causes of these diseases.

Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how severe the future illness course of a patient with psychosis will be, according to research funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The findings could allow doctors to make more accurate decisions about how best to treat patients.

Psychosis is a condition that affects people's minds, altering the way they think, feel and behave. It can be accompanied by hallucinations and delusions. The most common forms are part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but symptoms of psychosis can also occur in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and alcohol or drug abuse.

A research group from the University of Leeds has shown that infection by the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, found in 10-20 per cent of the UK's population, directly affects the production of dopamine, a key chemical messenger in the brain.

Their findings are the first to demonstrate that a parasite found in the brain of mammals can affect dopamine levels.

Whilst the work has been carried out with rodents, lead investigator Dr Glenn McConkey of the University's Faculty of Biological Sciences, believes that the findings could ultimately shed new light on treating human neurological disorders that are dopamine-related such as schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Parkinson's disease.

Like a bridge that spans a river to connect two major metropolises, the corpus callosum is the main conduit for information flowing between the left and right hemispheres of our brains. Now, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that people who are born without that link - a condition called agenesis of the corpus callosum, or AgCC - still show remarkably normal communication across the gap between the two halves of their brains.

Their findings are outlined in a paper published October 19 in The Journal of Neuroscience.