| Budget Amount *help |
¥4,160,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥960,000)
Fiscal Year 2013: ¥260,000 (Direct Cost: ¥200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥60,000)
Fiscal Year 2012: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000)
Fiscal Year 2011: ¥3,250,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥750,000)
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
We investigated central cholinergic activity and olfactory function in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. For this study, we developed a novel device to easily measure short-latency afferent inhibition (SAI) as a putative marker of central cholinergic activity and found reduced SAI levels in schizophrenia patients. We also noted impaired odor identification performance in schizophrenia patients using a smell identification test card (Open Essence). Based on our results, we speculate that the central cholinergic circuit and neural substrates of odor identification are impaired by schizophrenia. Unfortunately we were not able to gather adequate data regarding the duration of untreated psychosis in these patients and additional studies are needed in order to clarify their relationship.
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