BREAKING NEWS: New #Alzheimer drug #Lecanemab slows cognitive decline (18-month change in CDR-SB) by 27%, drastically lowers brain amyloid load by 59 centiloids to 23 (below PET amyloid positivity)! NEJM paper: nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… prnewswire.com/news-releases/… #CTAD Randy Bateman notes that lecanemab reverses amyloid levels; 20 centiloid drop in amyloid levels at 3 months and 50 centiloid drop by 1 year on neuroimaging measures #CTAD2022

Marek Kubicki’s plenary now starting at 6pm: diffusion imaging in schizophrenia shows brain microstructural abnormalities, but what is the underlying biology ? #ICP2022 a 🧵 if I can keep up with his talk ! : Do Inflammation and myelin abnormalities play a role? There are many possible mechanisms …

Schizophrenia research pioneer Robin Murray’s Keynote: excess dopamine synthesis in schizophrenia leads to the loss of ability to screen out unimportant stimuli; reading too much significance into unimportant things, “aberrant salience” #ICP2022 Stress or drug abuse also releases more dopamine: dopamine blocker medication can alleviate symptoms; with CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) this can be successful in first episode psychosis up to 80% of the time #ICP2022

Stephen Lawrie’s Keynote right now at #ICP2022: reviews 14 MRI studies of brain changes over time in schizophrenia and sees about half a standard deviation progression in brain volume loss; inactivity and sedation contributes to GM loss? And genomic risk markers for schizophrenia account for 20% of the risk for schizophrenia at the population level; polygenic risk score for SCZ is negatively assoc w/ cortical thickness in the UK Biobank #ICP2022