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PREVIOUS RESEARCH
The Brain and Cognition Discovery Foundation is actively involved in research. Highlights from our competed research is found below. If you're interested in learning more about our current research or participating, please check out our ongoing research.
Scientific publications from our research can be found here.
Validation of the THINC-IT Tool for Cognitive Dysfunction in Major Depressive Disorder
Primary objective: To validate a tool capable of identifying the presence of cognitive dysfunction in adults with MDD.
Rationale:
There is a pressing need for measurement-based care in the safe and effective management of MDD. Currently, there is no validated consensually agreed upon tool to screen for and/or measure dysfunction in cognition in adults with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Moreover, there is no clinical metric that is currently available to determine the effect of treatment on the cognitive domain in adults with Major Depressive Disorder – a gold standard does not exist. The THINC tool broadly aims to close the gap by serving as an instrument that is brief, easy to use, freely available, and conceptually valid.
Exploring the Neural Substrates of Cognitive Dysfunction With Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Agonists
Primary objective: The overall goal of this study is to explore the relationship between a metabolic molecular target (i.e. the GLP1 system), the neural circuits of interest and the behavioral phenotype cognitive function.
Cognitive deficits are a core feature across disparate brain disorders, being highly prevalent and pervasive. Cognitive dysfunction is thought to be underlied by abnormalities in distributed brain circuits. The neural mechanisms underlying the dysregulation in these circuits are poorly understood. Emerging evidence indicates that metabolic abnormalities are highly relevant for the domain of cognitive function and indicate that alterations in metabolic pathways may be relevant to neurocognitive decline across different populations. We hypothesize that GLP-1 and the GLP-1R are relevant for molecular and cellular processes that are thought to underlie the formation and maintenance of brain circuits.