Psychosis MRI Shared Data Resource (Psy-ShareD): Partnership Grant

精神分裂症和精神病影响了大约1%的个体；那些被确诊的患者往往无法在社会中正常活动，因为目前的治疗方案的有效性有限。精神分裂症会导致幻觉和妄想，严重影响个人的健康，给患者和家属带来巨大的痛苦。尽管在了解精神分裂症的风险因素和大脑如何受到影响方面取得了一些进展，但我们仍然远远不能确定导致精神分裂症的原因。磁共振成像（MRI）等现代大脑扫描技术已被用于研究精神分裂症患者大脑结构的差异，并为此投入了大量的研究时间和金钱。然而，大多数研究都是由个别研究小组对相对较少的患者进行的。精神分裂症的症状因人而异，因此我们需要对大量的脑部扫描进行调查，以得出可靠的结论。此外，我们需要考虑疾病的所有阶段，也要考虑高危个体的大脑结构差异，比如那些有精神分裂症家族史的人。这将使我们了解大脑发生了什么变化，导致精神疾病的高度衰弱症状。为了实现这一目标，我们需要将之前大量脑部扫描研究的数据结合起来，这样所有的研究人员都可以访问并分析来自不同人群的大量脑部扫描数据。为了应对这些挑战，我们建议将全球研究人员收集的现有MRI扫描合并为一个免费可用的数据库资源（Psy-ShareD）。扫描将是匿名的，这意味着患者将无法被识别。脑部扫描将有其他相关信息，如症状信息和记忆/注意力测试的结果，这将有助于研究人员更多地了解精神病患者的大脑是如何受到影响的。该数据库将为许多研究精神分裂症的研究人员提供重要的资源，并将允许其他人进行新的研究。这是迫切需要的，因为目前，没有这种类型的数据库存在于英国或国际。世界各地的所有研究人员都可以访问Psy-ShareD，还将提供指导和教学材料，特别是帮助新手用户。在计划这项研究时，我们会让有过精神病经历的人参与进来。我们将以最好的方式寻求他们的建议，以确保数据包含在数据库中的患者的隐私，使用数据库的最佳方式，以及如何向其他研究人员和患者推广数据库。通过允许所有机构和所有职业阶段的研究人员分析跨疾病阶段的高质量数据，Psy-ShareD具有影响研究的巨大潜力。这将在理解精神病患者的大脑中发生了什么方面带来重要的见解和进展。除了最初用于建立Psy-ShareD的2500张MRI扫描外，我们将积极寻找其他愿意在英国和海外捐赠他们的MRI数据的研究人员。我们将特别从国际联系人和合作者那里寻求MRI数据，这些联系人和合作者可以提供非欧洲人群的相关MRI数据集，以确保Psy-ShareD更具代表性。此外，我们将开展一系列推广活动，并利用社交媒体渠道，以最大限度地提高知名度和吸收率。我们希望确保所有感兴趣的研究人员都知道psyshared，确保这个新的有价值的资源得到充分利用。

Schizophrenia and psychotic illness affects approximately 1% of individuals; those diagnosed are often unable to function normally within society, as current treatment options are limited in their effectiveness. Schizophrenia causes hallucinations and delusions which profoundly impact the individual's wellbeing, causing huge suffering for patients and families. Although some progress has been made in terms of understanding risk factors and how the brain is affected in schizophrenia, we are still far from certain about what causes it. Modern brain scanning techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have been used to study how the structure of the brain differs in schizophrenia, and much research time and money has been invested in this. However, most of this research has been conducted by individual research groups on relatively small numbers of patients. Schizophrenia symptoms vary a lot between individuals, so we need to run investigations across large numbers of brain scans in order to draw reliable conclusions. Also, we need to consider all stages of the disease, and also consider brain structural differences in individuals at high risk, such as those with a family history of schizophrenia. This will allow us to understand what changes occur in the brain, to cause the highly debilitating symptoms of psychosis. To achieve this, we need to combine data from a large number of previous brain scanning studies, so all researchers can access and conduct analyses on a large collection of brain scans drawn from a wide range of different people. To address these challenges we propose to combine existing MRI scans collected by researchers worldwide into one freely available database resource (Psy-ShareD). The scans will be anonymised meaning that patients won't be able to be identified. The brain scans will have other information linked to them such as symptom information and also results of memory/attention tests, which will help researchers understand more about how the brain is affected in psychosis. The database will provide an essential resource for many researchers who study schizophrenia and will allow others to undertake new research. It is sorely needed, as currently, no database of this type exists in the UK or internationally. Psy-ShareD will be accessible to all researchers around the world, guidance and instructional materials will also be made available, to help novice users in particular. We will involve people who have experienced psychosis when planning this research. We will seek their advice in the best way to ensure the privacy of patients whose data is included in the database, the best way to use the database and also how to promote the database to other researchers and patients. Psy-ShareD has large potential to impact research, by allowing researchers at all institutions, and at all career stages, to analyse high-quality data across disease stages. This will lead to important insights and progress in understanding what occurs in the brain in patients with psychosis. In addition to the initial 2,500 MRI scans used to establish Psy-ShareD, we will actively seek out other researchers willing to donate their MRI data in the UK and overseas. We will specifically seek MRI data from international contacts and collaborators that can provide relevant MRI datasets in non-European populations, to ensure Psy-ShareD is more representative. Also, we will undertake a range of promotional activities, and make use of social media channels, to maximise visibility and uptake. We want to make sure that all interested researchers know about Psy-ShareD, ensuring this new and valuable resource gets fully utilised.