Oslo-Berlin Research Collaboration into Motivation in Schizophrenia

We will facilitate the study of dopamine, motivational defects and schizophrenia by establishing a collaboration between the psychiatric neuroimaging group at the Charite Hospital in Berlin (PI Henrik Walter) and the large ongoing Thematically Organized Psychosis (TOP) Study at the University of Oslo (PI Ole A. Andreassen). The Berlin-Oslo collaboration will take advantage of the academic neuroimaging community in Berlin with access to state-of-the-art technical facilities and the large well-characterize d patients sample collected by the group in Oslo. The previous leader of the TOP Study imaging group, Jimmy Jensen PhD, has now become a researcher in the imaging group at Charite, while he will maintain a guest researcher position in Oslo. This will enab le the devlopment of a close collaboration. The main aim is to establish an active collaboration neuroimaging research between the Berlin and Oslo groups, focusing on the motivation system in schizophrenia. We will arrange common research seminars and ex change PhD students for training, perform joint analytical work for existing fMRI data collected in ongoing projects, search for replication of each others findings, and develop new projects with the aim to form the basis of grant applications. We propos e collaborations in a series of experiments to systematically investigate the role of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system in schizophrenia. The funding will be used for travel for PhD students, research visits and seminars in each others groups. The proje ct will have an unique potential in developing a new, exciting collaboration between the two countries, based on specific, focused research projects in schizophrenia pathology, and based on a key scientific personnell with a combined position at both cent ers.