IMAGEMEND is a study with focus
on development of effective imaging
tools for diagnosis, monitoring
and management of mental disorders.

Project leader

Prof. Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg Coordinator and Leader of WP1 Central infrastructure and WP7 Dissemination Phone: +49 621 1703 2001 Fax: +49 621 1703 2005 E-mail

Project staff

Prof. Dr. Marcella Rietschel Workpackage leader of WP6 Ethics Phone: +49 621 1703 6051 E-mail

Emanuel Schwarz, Ph.D Co-Coordinator and Co-Leader of WP1 Central infrastructure and WP7 Dissemination Phone: +49 621 1703 6516 E-mail

Institute presentation

The Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) is one of Europe’s leading research institutions dedicated to mental health. Its wide-ranging research activities are based on a combination of extensive in- and outpatient programmes with full access to research dedicated, state-of the art magnetic resonance imaging facilities (MRI) of 1.5 and 3 Tesla as well as high-throughput facilities for genotyping and molecular biology. The department of psychiatry and psychotherapy and its 17 research groups focus on the characterization of risk mechanisms for psychiatric illnesses and their translation into novel therapeutic and diagnostic approaches, using structural and functional brain abnormalities and their genetic and environmental determinants as a main approach. CIMH’s Department of Genetic Epidemiology in Psychiatry focusses on identifying genetic and environmental causal factors for mental disorders, with a particular focus on affective, schizophrenia-spectrum, and addiction disorders. The department conducts detailed phenotype characterization of large, internationally collected samples of patients. Genotyping of the DNA of these patients and their relatives is performed in the Department’s fully equipped molecular genetics laboratory.

Prof. Dr. Meyer-Lindenberg is director of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, chairman of its department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and chair at the University of Heidelberg. Meyer-Lindenberg has worked extensively on neural mechanisms of risk for psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia and affective disorders through an innovative approach which combines neuroimaging, genetics and behavioral characterizations to identify specific neural risk mechanisms which can be localized to specific functional networks and genes acting in the CNS. Among other work in the field of “imaging genetics”, his group has contributed first identification of a neural risk mechanism associated with a genome wide significant genetic risk variant related to schizophrenia. He has also characterized neural mechanisms for social risk factors for neuropsychiatric disorders and has developed several of his discoveries into potential biomarkers for antipsychotic medication.

Prof. Dr. Marcella Rietschel is Director of both the Department of Genetic Epidemiology in Psychiatry and the CIMH molecular genetics laboratory at Heidelberg University/Medical Faculty Mannheim. She is a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and a medical geneticist, and is an expert in all aspects of formal and molecular psychiatric genetics. Her research focus is the search for genetic and environmental risk factors for psychiatric disorders, in particular affective disorders, schizophrenia, and alcohol dependence. A specific emphasis of her work is the refining of phenotype-genotype correlations across diagnostic categories through the application of advanced statistical techniques. Marcella Rietschel has established large collections of data from psychiatric patients and the general population, as well as a biomaterial bank for DNA, plasma, serum, and RNA samples. Her group is among the leading research teams in psychiatric genetics worldwide. Her other research interest is the study of the ethical, legal, and social aspects of psychiatric genetics.

Dr Emanuel Schwarz is a research scientist at the CIMH with significant experience in the discovery of diagnostic and predictive/prognostic biomarkers for psychiatric disorders. He coordinated the statistical analysis for numerous biomarker discovery projects for schizophrenia, affective and autism spectrum disorders. These investigations led to the development and clinical translation of VeriPsych^TM, the first ever molecular test to aid in the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Project leader

Prof. Gunter Schumann Leader of WP4 Pre-symptomatic and early diagnosis Phone: +44 (0)207 848 5314 Fax: +44 (0)207 848 0940 E-mail

Project staff

Prof. Ilina Singh Professor of Science, Ethics and Society Phone: +44 (0)207 848 7074 Fax: n.a. E-mail

Institute presentation

The Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) is a postgraduate medical school associated with the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and is a School of King's College London (KCL) of the University of London. The IOP is the largest academic community in Europe for Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience and ranks within the top five psychiatric research institutions worldwide. As a partnership between the MRC (Medical Research Council) and the IoP, the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre is a unique multi-disciplinary centre that studies social epidemiology, child and adult psychiatry, developmental psychopathology, development in the family, personality traits, cognitive abilities, statistical genetics, and molecular genetics. This unparalleled approach has inspired and nurtured collaborative research between the different departments within the Institute of Psychiatry and demonstrated its impressive multifaceted expertise.

For WP3 they will contribute three clinical samples comprising over 600 patients to aid in the identification of prognostic marker sets in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

For WP4 they will analyse data from the IMAGEN project (Coordinator G. Schumann) where they have explored intermediate phenotypes of risk for adolescent mental illness based on cognitive, behavioural, clinical, genetic and neuroimaging data of over 2000 adolescents ssessed at age 14, 16 and 19 years (Schumann et al. 2010).

Project leader

Prof. Alessandro Bertolino, MD, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39 080 5593204 E-mail

Project staff

Dr. Ileana Andriola, MD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Dr. Giuseppe Blasi, MD, PhD Phone: +39-080-5593629 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Dr. Grazia Caforio, MD, PhD Phone: +39-080-5593173 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Dr. Annabella Di Giorgio, MD, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Dr. Tiziana Quarto Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Leonardo Fazio, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Barbara Gelao, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Riccarda Lomuscio Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Rita Masellis Phone: +39-080-5034710 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Dr. Apostolos Papazacharias, MD, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Giulio Pergola, PhD Phone: +39-080-5593630 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Dr. Antonio Rampino, MD, PhD Phone: +39-080-5593630 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Raffaella Romano, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Paolo Taurisano, PhD Phone: +39 080 5478572 Fax: +39-080-5593204 E-mail

Institute presentation

Prof. Bertolino’s lab is interested in characterizing the genetic mechanisms of susceptibility to schizophrenia, studying gene effects on brain information processing in patients, their siblings, and healthy volunteers. The lab pursues translational projects ranging from gene expression/regulation in cell systems and human brain tissue, to studies of brain function with neuroimaging in living subjects stratified by relevant genotype.

UNIBA Third Parties:

- University of Chieti "G. D'Annunzio", Cheti, Italy: Prof. Giancarlo Romani

- University of Udine, Udine, Italy: Dr. Paolo Brambilla, Eleonora Maggioni

Dr. Paolo Brambilla Phone: n.a. Fax: n.a. E-mail

Eleonora Maggioni Phone: n.a. Fax: n.a. E-mail