Jose Cortes-Briones, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, has been awarded a Young Investigator Travel Award to attend the 15th International Congress on Schizophrenia Research (ICOSR).
At ICOSR, Cortes-Briones will present first-of-its-kind data in humans showing that THC (the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis) acutely increases neural noise as measured by EEG and that there is a strong positive relationship between neural noise and the psychosis-like phenomena induced by THC.
In 2012, Cortes-Briones joined the Yale–VA Schizophrenia Neuropharmacology Research Group (SNRG) led by Dr. Cyril D’Souza. His research uses a number of nonlinear analyses on EEG data in order to study the brain dynamics of drug-induced psychosis-like states and schizophrenia. His training at Catholic University of Chile spans astronomy, engineering, philosophy, clinical psychology, and neuroscience.
ICOSR is a biennial meeting where scientists representing the broad range of disciplines involved with discovery in schizophrenia gather to exchange data, techniques, and ideas. This year’s meeting will be held March 28–April 1, 2015 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.