They publish in 'Neuroscience' findings on the cognitive problems suffered by people with schizophrenia

ALICANTE, June 12 (EUROPA PRESS) -

A team of researchers from the CEU Cardenal Herrera University (CEU UCH) in Elche, the CSIC-UMH Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante and the Roche Innovation Center, from the Roche Pharma laboratories in Basel (Switzerland), have published in the scientific journal ' Neuroscience' new findings on the alterations in neuronal activity that underlie the cognitive problems suffered by people with schizophrenia, in an experimental animal model.

As explained by Jorge Brotons Mas, a professor at the CEU UCH in Elche, who has led this project, "neural activity is organized thanks to different oscillations that act as 'orchestra conductors', facilitating information processing. Its alteration , which we have analyzed in this research, is linked, among other things, to working memory problems suffered by people diagnosed with schizophrenia".

Professor Brotons points out that "there are various hypotheses about the origin of schizophrenia." "One of them -he details- postulates that a deficit in the function of NMDAr receptors may be the origin of schizophrenia. Both in patients and in animal models, the administration of blockers of these receptors reproduces many of the symptoms of schizophrenia. schizophrenia. For this reason we pharmacologically blocked these receptors in a mouse animal model. This allowed us to investigate the activity of brain regions involved in this function during the performance of a memory task."

Among the most outstanding findings of their study, the research team has detected that the interaction between different rhythms, especially the co-modulation of theta/gamma brain waves, is necessary for the correct execution of the memory task.

On the other hand, as pointed out by the researcher of the CEU UCH doctoral program Pablo Abad Pérez, "the results show that the blockade of NMDAr interrupts the mechanisms that allow us to generate an internal map of the places we visit and explore". And he adds: "The alterations that we have found could explain the cognitive problems in schizophrenia."

For Dr. Roger Redondo, director of Roche's Systems Neurosciences laboratory in Basel, "although much remains to be learned about how the brain processes information, in this work we found how the decoupling between theta and gamma rhythms underlies the memory deficits. Understanding this alteration is a previous step to be able to restore cognitive function in different pathologies".

The research team led by the professor of the Department of Medicine and Surgery of the CEU UCH in Elche, Jorge Brotons Mas, has been integrated by Víctor Borrell and Luis M. Martínez Otero, researchers from the CSIC-UMH Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante; professor Javier Molina, doctoral student Pablo Abad Pérez, from CEU UCH; and Roger Redondo, director of the Neurosciences of Systems laboratory at Roche, Basel (Switzerland).

The project has been developed within the framework of the Joint Action Plan between the Alicante Institute of Neurosciences and the CEU Cardenal Herrera University, which allowed the project to start a few years ago with the Roche Pharma laboratories in Switzerland. A collaboration whose latest result is the study just published by Neuroscience. This project has been possible thanks to the financing obtained within the State Program for R D and Oriented to the Challenges of the Society of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (NMERS Project, RTI2018-097474-A-I00).