How can healthy people help doctors to understand and treat mental illness?

Serious mental illnesses are now understood to be brain disorders. In the past 10 years, researchers have developed new tools, like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which show how the brain is functioning. However, their use for clinical diagnosis remains unproven. In the Center for Cognitive Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, we use fMRI to understand how the brain functions differently in people with mental illnesses, and what tests are best for identifying these problems.

What is the Center for Cognitive Medicine?

The Center for Cognitive Medicine is part of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Center is dedicated to learning about the causes of brain disorders, and how to better diagnose and treat them. Our current research programs are focused on autism, traumatic brain injury, effects of hormones on brain function, and the early evaluation and treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. As part of our research, we recruit healthy individuals for studies so that we can define the range of normal brain function in order to develop new clinical tests. Like any medical test, we need to know what test values are typical for healthy people so that we can see if patients are outside the normal range in a way that is informative about their disease.

How you can help?

We need healthy people to participate in our studies and help us learn how healthy brains function. We need this knowledge so that we can learn more about what is not functioning normally in the brains of people with mental illness. Progress in our field is dependent upon the generous contribution of time and effort of the people from the community who participate in research studies like those conducted in the Center.

What is it like to participate in a study?

We have a number of studies that involve different tests that may include:

1. Eye Movement Studies. This involves watching dots move on a large screen while eye movements are measured with special glasses and electrodes. The electrodes are used only as a way to record how the eyes move.

2. MRI. An MRI scanner takes pictures of the brain to show which areas are working when people are thinking. MRI scanners are used for routine clinical examinations and do not use radiation as in tests using x-rays. For these studies, we will ask you to lie inside the MRI scanner to perform mental tasks while we take pictures of your brain at work.

3. Neuropsychology Testing. We ask people to take paper-and-pencil and computerized tests of mental abilities like memory, attention, and problem-solving.

4. Clinical Evaluations. We typically ask research participants questions about their health history. This includes any history of mental health problems, physical symptoms and medical treatments.

Different studies you might participate in take different amounts of time, from about 3 to 8 hours in total. Longer studies are usually completed over 2 to 3 days. Participants are paid for their time.

Take a virtual tour of common research procedures at the Center for Cognitive Medicine

How do I get more information?

You can call our staff at the Center for Cognitive Medicine at 312-413-3426 or 312-413-8736, or you may get more information from our website http://ccm.psych.uic.edu