From classroom to cutting-edge: Student’s research sheds light on brain plasticity in schizophrenia – School of Medicine News

Research led by a Wayne State University School of Medicine student comparing the plasticity of brain networks between healthy patients and those with schizophrenia completing a learning task may lead to a better understanding of the complexity of disordered brain function in schizophrenia.

Medical student Kalyyanee Nanaaware used Dynamic Causal Modeling to discover patterns of causal connections between brain regions, and to understand how the connection strength changed over the course of learning.  The study utilized sophisticated connectivity analyses applied to functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging data collected while 92 participants, 52 with stable schizophrenia, undertook a learning task.

“Encoding and Retrieval Dynamics During Frontal-Hippocampal Learning: Causal Modeling of Brain Networks in Schizophrenia and Health” is published in the journal Hippocampus.

According to the study’s abstract, hippocampal-based associative learning is a cornerstone of human behavior and is compromised in schizophrenia.

“We found that both control participants, and patients with schizophrenia, demonstrated a great deal of network plasticity during learning. This showed that although learning performance is generally impaired in patients with schizophrenia, a measure of plasticity is conserved in schizophrenia,” Nanaaware said. “Additionally, we found that network pathways involving the hippocampus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex demonstrated reduced connectivity during learning in patients with schizophrenia. This highlights the importance of frontal-hippocampal pathways during learning and supports the disconnection hypothesis of schizophrenia, which proposes that abnormal interactions between brain regions underlie the core pathology of this disorder. Finally, we also found some evidence of network dysplasticity.”

Nanaaware is a Class of 2027 M.D. candidate. The Katy, Texas native arrived in Detroit as a student in WSU’s Med-Direct Scholar program, a tuition-free B.S. to M.D. pipeline that accepts 10 students per year. Originally a biology major, she became intrigued by neuroscience later in her undergraduate years and has been working in the lab of Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D., since 2020.

“The paper is a significant achievement for her. It underlines the importance of perseverance in research among medical students, and the value of this research for their medical careers,” Dr. Diwadkar said. “It is an exceptionally sophisticated investigation of the plasticity of brain networks during learning in both schizophrenia and healthy participants, while showing salient deficits in brain network function in the clinical group.”

As an undergraduate, Nanaaware earned two degrees from WSU – a bachelor of arts in Anthropology and a bachelor of science in Neuroscience.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the human experience, especially in the context of medicine,” Nanaaware said. “Psychiatry and Neuroscience are particularly interesting fields because they explore complex scientific questions about the human experience. There is a great deal yet to be discovered about how our brains work and about different pathologies, which attracted me to this field of research.”

She has presented the work at international meetings in Glasgow, Scotland in 2022 and Seoul, South Korea in 2024.  

“I think it’s rewarding to look back and see how much I’ve changed and grown academically while at Wayne State, from my undergraduate days to now as a medical student. I never imagined that I’d conduct research and eventually be able to publish my work,” she said.

She advises students conducting research during medical school to choose an area that is genuinely interesting to them.

“Our workload as medical students is challenging and time-intensive but making consistent bits of progress on a project is manageable. Research is a product of patience, as most things in life are. It takes meaningful and steady efforts over a long period of time for your work to come to fruition,” she said. “It has been a rewarding experience. I feel that being able to perform this research as a medical student has positively challenged and shaped me in many ways as a future physician. I think that being a medical student at Wayne State provides us access to a multitude of clinical research opportunities. I’m grateful to have been able to take advantage of these opportunities as a medical student.”

The  work was supported by the Lycaki-Young Funds (State of Michigan), the DMC Foundation, the Ethel and James Flinn Foundation, the Cohen Neuroscience Endowment, the Dorsey Endowment, and the National Institutes of Mental Health (MH111177).