Grant: Project Grant

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) are associated with significant disturbances of metabolism, brain health, cognition, and day-to-day functioning. To date, there has been no longitudinal study that examines the relationship between imaging biomarkers of metabolic and brain health, nor explored how cognition relates to such biomarkers. The proposed novel study aims to address this gap. We plan to leverage the cross-sectional imaging and longitudinal clinical and cognitive measures obtained in an ongoing large cohort study and add longitudinal brain and abdominal imaging. We will also add longitudinal data from healthy controls. One hundred and fifty healthy control participants and one hundred and fifty participants with SSDs will be enrolled and complete an MRI scan (including brain and abdominal acquisitions) and clinical/cognitive assessments at baseline. Follow-up MRI (also including brain and abdominal acquisitions) and clinical/cognitive assessments will be performed after 2 years. This study will bring together a multidisciplinary team with expertise in multimodal neuroimaging, psychiatry, and metabolic health to disentangle relationships between brain and body imaging biomarkers.