SoCAT- ALCOHOL

The aim of the study is, to examine the effect of alcohol attention control training programs on alcohol attention bias, craving, and relapse.

SoCAT- DECISION MAKING

Many of the choices we make in life are based on certain probability calculations. For example, why do we take road B and not road A? Because the traffic on road B is clearer and the road is more comfortable. However, if, after a few overlaps, the traffic on this road becomes congested and the road loses its comfort, then we try the other road. If the same situation happens on road A after a while, we must recalculate which road to take. The same thing happens when we buy things, or even when we choose a profession or a spouse. So, because we cannot see the future with certainty, we choose based on the best probability with the information we have at the time.

Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness with a prevalence of 1% in the general population. It is characterized by symptoms such as auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions, and withdrawal from social life. Medications are very effective in a significant part of these symptoms. In recent years, important research has been conducted on the fact that patients with schizophrenia quit or withdraw from social situations in a short time despite the benefit of medication. These studies have indicated that there may be a relationship between schizophrenia patients' learning abilities and social and medication decision-making.

With this study, it has been shown that schizophrenia patients have decision-making problems in simple and complicated situations. This new information will contribute to treatment compliance and the preparation of programs to reintegrate patients into social life.

SoCAT-ALZ-HR

The scope of the TÜBİTAK-funded Alzheimer's project is aimed to identify the normal, pathological, and pathology-compensating neuronal circuits that need to be known to diagnose Alzheimer's Disease (AD) at the earliest possible stage, to measure their functions, and to detect the accompanying anatomical changes.

SoCAT–ALZ-I

SoCAT researchers have succeeded in diagnosing early Alzheimer's Disease with 80% accuracy using artificial intelligence and MRI. The project, which was awarded by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, was also featured in Current Alzheimer's Research Journal as an e-pub. This method used by scientists will facilitate the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, as well as the differential diagnosis of other types of dementia and old-age depression that are confused with Alzheimer's Disease. Shrinking brain areas in Alzheimer's patients (Ege University Data) As in other developed countries, Alzheimer's and similar dementia diseases have become more common in our country due to the aging of the population and prolonged life expectancy. While 4% of people under 65 years of age have Alzheimer's disease, half of the population aged 75 years and over have Alzheimer's disease. Today, the number of Alzheimer's patients living in Turkey is 400,000 and it is estimated to be 2.5 million in 2050. This information reveals how serious a health problem the disease is. Despite many studies, existing drugs are only effective in the early and early middle stages. The correct diagnosis of Alzheimer's requires time-consuming neuropsychological tests and imaging methods in addition to examination of the patient by a specialist psychiatrist or neurologist. This evaluation process is long and expensive. The performance and evaluation of neuropsychological tests, as well as the interpretation of data obtained by brain imaging methods, should be performed by personnel trained in this field. Despite all these steps, the differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and depression, especially in old age, cannot be made completely. In patients with depression who are mistakenly diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, treatment is significantly delayed.

SoCAT–BDNF-I

After nearly 5 years of work, SoCAT researchers have identified changes in the brain caused by genes thought to predispose to depression. In papers published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience and The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, it was revealed that genes encoding the serotonin pump and brain-derived growth factor (BDNF) affect brain structure differently in depressed patients than in healthy individuals. Both genes were thought to play a role in the development of depression, but the effect of genes on areas of the brain that are particularly affected by stress, such as the hippocampus, was not well known. SoCAT researchers used advanced brain imaging to measure the hippocampus of a group of drug-free patients. They found that the gene encoding the serotonin pump, which controls the amount of serotonin in the brain, known to be an important factor in depression, has an effect on the size of the hippocampus and that this part of the brain is smaller in individuals carrying the risky gene. On the other hand, in the gene encoding BDNF, contrary to expectations, the gene thought to be disadvantageous did not cause shrinkage in the hippocampus. SoCAT project manager Prof. Dr. Ali Saffet Gönül stated that this finding was very interesting and continued as follows "We had previously found and published a correlation between BDNF levels and hippocampus volume, and this finding attracted worldwide attention. Now we have investigated the effect of the gene encoding BDNF. It seems that the gene that is thought to cause depression is not as disadvantageous as thought. This new finding is likely to change some of our preconceptions about the genetics of depression."

SoCAT–Biventricle

Bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depressive illness), which affects one in every hundred people, causes serious difficulties for the sufferer and their relatives. Despite its widespread prevalence and negative impact on life, our knowledge about the causes of bipolar disorder is very limited. It is thought to be caused by a disruption in the functioning of certain areas of the brain, but how this happens is not known for certain.

Studies have shown that there may be enlargement of the lateral ventricles in the brain, but there is not enough information about the cause of this enlargement. It is thought that developmental disorders in brain tissue or tissue loss may lead to these enlargements. Therefore, ventricles, which are adjacent to regions closely related to emotion regulation, should be examined in more detail. In our study, it is planned to examine the ventricles by shape analysis method and to investigate regional changes. We also aimed to investigate the regions associated with risk and resistance in healthy siblings with similar genetic and environmental risks.

SoCAT–DEP-Hippocampus

Depression is one of the most important health problems today. 15% of women and 7% of men suffer from depression at least once in their lifetime. Many patients experience this illness recurrently. 85% of patients experience more than one episode of depression within 10 years. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020 depression will be the second leading cause of workforce loss.

Research into the cause of depression has identified problems in the structure and function of areas of the brain associated with memory and stress. One of the most important of these areas is the hippocampus, a seahorse-like structure. There is evidence that this structure shrinks. However, we did not have enough evidence to know whether this shrinkage was pre-disease or post-disease.

According to Prof. Dr. Ali Saffet Gönül and Prof. Dr. Ömer Kitiş, directors of the SoCAT laboratory, this study has two important findings. First, depression unfortunately damages at least some of the areas of the brain associated with stress. Second, antidepressants play a preventive role in the development of this damage. According to Dr. Gönül, the second finding should be accepted as scientific evidence as to why patients should continue taking their medication when the effectiveness of antidepressants is being debated. The article has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Psychiatric Research.

SoCAT–DEP-I

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by depressed mood, loss of enjoyment of life, sleep and appetite disturbances, lack of energy, guilt thoughts, loss of concentration, and suicidal thoughts, with relapses and residual symptoms in the majority of patients. MDD usually begins in the 20s and its frequency increases with age. As in all psychiatric disorders, both environmental and genetic factors play a role in its development. Although many different findings have been obtained in imaging studies, it has been found that there is shrinkage in the region called hippocampus, which is associated with memory functions in the brain.

In this study, we aimed to compare the hippocampus volumes of women with a family history of MDD, who had MDD at an early age, and who had recurrence of the disease with those of a control group.

SoCAT–DEP-II

In the evolutionary process, it has been determined that creatures that develop the ability to coexist and cooperate have a higher chance of survival. One of the key pillars of this ability to be together is to be supported by the group to which the creature belongs. A decrease in social support creates a depression-like state and brings with it the risk of a decrease in survival skills. Studies have shown a close relationship between lost social support and clinical depression or similar behavioral patterns. Although the strong relationship between social support and health is known, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not fully understood and especially neurocognitive mechanisms are largely unexplored. Eisenberger et al. (2007) suggested that social support may be associated with decreased activity in limbic regions such as the amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex, which play a role in the response to negative and threatening events. Similarly, the pain of exclusion from the group to which one belongs activates neural projections similar to physical pain. Studying the effects of the presence and subsequent loss of social support on the brain will not only help us understand the neural components of thoughts and feelings of human beings as social beings but will also provide a better understanding of the pathway to depression.

SoCAT–DEP-III

MDD is one of the most common mood disorders in the society. Familial risk; the presence of a history of depression in parents, especially in the mother, is an important risk factor for the development of depression in young people. Connectivity studies related to MDD show that there is dysregulation in many neural circuits in various brain structures such as the limbic system, prefrontal cortex, and cingulate cortex, including the hippocampus. It has been shown in preclinical studies that cognitive impairment, one of the main symptoms of MDD, is associated with a decrease in gray matter volume in the hippocampus. It is not yet clear whether the reduction in hippocampus volume is present before the onset of symptoms as a result of a faulty neurodevelopmental change or whether it occurs during the disease due to neurotoxic mechanisms related to the pathophysiology of depression. Therefore, this study included women with a family history of recurrent depression and their unaffected high-risk healthy daughters and examined possible structural changes in their hippocampus, one of the brain regions commonly affected in MDD. In addition to hippocampus volume assessment, 3D shape analysis was performed to detect regional changes that have not yet led to volume changes. The inclusion of high-risk healthy girls who have not yet been ill is important both in terms of evaluating the effect of genetic factors and detecting endophenotypic changes. In the long term, this and similar studies are thought to identify high-risk individuals in terms of treatment non-response and relapses and to guide the selection of patients who will require advanced treatment.

SoCAT–DEP-IV

Major depressive disorder is a common psychiatric disorder in society. Since it causes long-term and major losses in the functionality of the person's life and his/her relationships with those closest to him/her, its underlying causes and treatments should be well investigated. It is thought that patients with depression have problems in the perception of stimuli from the environment that may arouse emotion in their daily lives and human relations, the emergence of emotions, their mental interpretation and control, and that these problems may lead to loss of functionality in daily life and make treatment difficult.

SoCAT–Hippocampus Education

The hippocampus, which is located in the inner part of the brain and is an important organ for the normal functioning of human memory, has been shown to shrink in many diseases such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, and depression. Many studies indicate that with this decrease in volume, patients lose many abilities that fulfill daily activities in parallel with the decrease in hippocampus volume. However, very few of the factors that alter hippocampus volume are known. One of these factors is thought to be intensive mental training. Indeed, it is believed that Alzheimer's disease may be less common in the highly educated and those who maintain their mental functions throughout their lives.

 The SoCAT-DEP team investigating the effect of education on memory functions found a positive correlation between the length of school years of intensive education and the size of the head of the hippocampus.

SoCAT–Memface

This study was designed to observe the changes in neural organization in the brain with aging. The study aims to test whether there is a difference in brain activity during a cognitive task in healthy elderly individuals without a diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorder and to reveal the relationship between this activity change and cognitive performance.

SoCAT–OBZ

Obesity is an important public health problem that is rapidly spreading and can lead to many morbidities and mortality. For this reason, both in the international treatment programs developed by the World Health Organization and in our country, the fight against obesity has accelerated in recent years. In addition to diet-exercise recommendations, and pharmacological or surgical treatments, psychosocial interventions play an important role in the treatment of obesity to change malnutrition behaviors and eating attitudes. When the eating attitudes of obese individuals are reviewed, impulsivity, sensitivity to reward, intolerance to social influence, and wrong decision-making strategies have a large place in the literature. However, data on the etiology of current eating behavior disorders are quite limited. This study aims to examine the decision-making processes and predisposition to social interaction in obese individuals and to determine the neural projections of these processes.

SoCAT–SCH-Def

Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder. To reduce this heterogeneity, categorizing schizophrenia into deficit and non-deficit subtypes according to negative symptoms is widely accepted. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether the changes in the ventricular volumes of deficit and non-deficit schizophrenia patients in 5 years were different. Instead of directly comparing two groups with each other, we took healthy controls as a reference baseline.

SoCAT–SCH-DTI

Schizophrenia is one of the psychiatric disorders that affects 1% of the population and for which no definitive cure has yet been found. Many ideas have been put forward about its causes, but only a few of these ideas have been confirmed. One of the ideas is that schizophrenia patients have impaired communication between different parts of the brain. Building on this idea, SoCAT researchers tested the integrity of the corpus callosum, which connects the brain hemispheres of schizophrenia patients. Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging, the researchers found differences in the circuits connecting the frontal part of the brain compared to normal individuals. Project director Prof. Dr. Ali Saffet Gönül pointed out that this finding indicates that schizophrenia is caused not only by damage to certain areas of the brain but also by damage to the circuits that connect these areas.

SoCAT–SCH-Emotion Recognition

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that starts at an early age and causes significant problems in understanding and adapting to the reality of the outside world. The lifetime prevalence rate varies between 0.5-1%. It is known that patients with schizophrenia have problems in two important areas. The first problem is related to the recognition and processing of emotions, while the second is structural problems in the thought process. The inability of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia to recognize and properly use emotions and their problems in the thought process disrupt their communication with other individuals. Disruption of communication between individuals also disrupts the interpersonal relationship. Disruption of interpersonal relationships can lead to aggressive attitudes even in normal individuals. Aggressive attitudes in schizophrenia patients and their treatment have been frequently discussed; however, research on the etiology of aggressive attitudes in these patients has been limited. On the other hand, problems in the recognition and processing of emotions were most frequently identified among the causes of aggression only in patients with persistent aggression and forensic records. However, the most important issue that has been overlooked is the fact that many patients show low severity but persistent aggressive attitudes and behaviors, especially towards family and close environments. In this study, Socat plans to systematically investigate the overlooked low and persistent aggressive attitudes and behaviors seen in a significant proportion of patients. In this context, it is aimed to investigate the relationship between recognition and discrimination of emotions (conscious and unconscious) and aggressive attitudes and behaviors in schizophrenia.

SoCAT–SCH-Frontotemporal

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder affecting approximately 1% of the population, usually starting at a young age and lasting a lifetime in a significant proportion of patients. In recent years, researchers have tried to find the factors that cause this disease, and brain imaging methods have provided important benefits in reaching this stage. Antipsychotic drugs constitute the main step in the treatment of the disease. However, some patients do not respond well to this treatment. Therefore, there is a need to elucidate the reasons for the poor prognosis in a group of patients who do not respond well to treatment and present with (negative) symptoms that significantly impair social adaptation. With this goal in mind, the SoCAT research group showed that the connection between the left frontal lobe and the lateral lobe of the brain is disrupted in schizophrenia patients with poor prognosis.

It was known that both lobes working together play important roles in planning and social perception and that these lobes do not work well in schizophrenia patients. In this study, advanced brain imaging methods were used to show that the connectivity between the lobes is problematic. This result showed that connection damage is as important in the symptoms of the disease as damage between brain regions. With this information, it has also become clear that new treatments are needed to reduce connection damage.

With this study, it has been shown that schizophrenia patients have difficulties in making decisions in simple situations in complicated situations. This new information will contribute to treatment compliance and the preparation of programs that will help patients regain social life.

SoCAT–SCH-I

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder with a prevalence of 0.5-1% in the general population, which impairs a person's ability to evaluate reality and causes differences in their thoughts and behaviors. In the late 19th century, scientists began to describe schizophrenia, which was called "early dementia" at the time, and in fact, it causes cognitive destruction and loss of skills in patients, partially confirming its early name. Schizophrenia is not only a disorder defined by psychiatrists as "positive psychotic findings", such as seeing non-existent images, hearing non-existent voices, etc., perception disorders, conversations with strange content, strange behaviors, and conducting thoughts that are not related to reality. Patients with schizophrenia are also characterized by "negative psychotic symptoms" such as restricted expression of emotion, low speech, withdrawal (asociality), inability to plan, initiate and maintain purposeful movements, and inability to exhibit emotional reactions. Although today's schizophrenia treatments have reached important points in calming and preventing positive psychotic symptoms, effective treatment of negative psychotic symptoms is still not possible. The reason for this may be that the reasons why negative psychotic symptoms occur have not been sufficiently elucidated.

As the SoCAT team, our aim in this study is to obtain data that may help us explain the causes of negative psychotic symptoms that are frequently seen in schizophrenia. In the schizophrenia literature, data suggest that the differences that cause the disease are due to volume increases in areas of the brain called lateral ventricles.

SoCAT–SCH-PL

Proving that the decrease in neuroplasticity in schizophrenia patients causes cognitive symptoms with neuroimaging study, determination of brain regions with decreased neuroplasticity in schizophrenia patients

SoCAT–Self Respect

In this study, we aim to identify the areas of the brain associated with self-confidence, relate and contribute to the current literature, and discuss the relationship between the external functions of the regions found and self-confidence.

SoCAT-Social Support

The aim of our study, conducted in collaboration with Ege University Department of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, Department of Radiology, and SoCAT Neuroimaging Unit, is to determine the mechanisms of social support in the brain. In the study, participants will be asked to fill out 5 scales and then undergo a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan lasting approximately 30 minutes.