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May Newsletter | 2024 Issue #2

Shared on behalf of Dr. Lena Palaniyappan & the Discourse Executive Committee.

By Paulina Dzialoszynski

Hello!

Please see below the exciting news coming from Discourse in Psychosis collaborators across the globe.

A note from Montreal:

Yes I am back in Montreal, but oh, how I longed to linger in Italy! The buzz of SIRS @ Florence was infectious as usual. This time we were treated to not one, but two splendid DISCOURSE panel symposia and a number of oral and poster presentations from our members. Yet, for many of us, the pièce de résistance awaited the next day, 2.5 hours north of Florence, in charming Pavia.

Valentina Bambini & Marta Bosia, the dynamic (+ pragmatic!) duo behind the 2nd DISCOURSE satellite meeting, have truly set the bar high for event organization. A round of applause to Chiara, Federico, and the rest of their stellar team, along with the dedicated members of the Discourse Program Planning Committee who made this gathering possible. Special thanks to Betsy for marshalling funding for travel awards. We supported 12 awardees – primarily early career researchers, trainees and colleagues from the Global South. A heartening development from our efforts at Pavia is the strengthening of the Italian chapter of DISCOURSE.

And fear not if you missed out on the Pavia event – most of the exchanges has been captured on record, and you’ll find the links when you scroll below.

A hearty thank you to everyone who generously responded to our call for funding data. I’m thrilled to report that, to date, our consortium members have rallied an impressive ~25M USD (to be exact – $24,864,000 USD from the data we’ve gathered) for projects that either directly benefit from our DISCOURSE consortium or acknowledge its vital role. This tally includes only those projects that reference our network and/or protocol in their funding applications. If you happened to overlook our earlier emails – it’s never too late to respond. Tracking our impact is paramount for sustaining our network, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to Paulina or Betsy with any new grants, training awards, or research funds you have to share.

And speaking of not missing out, be sure to catch Emre Bora’s thought-provoking blog post in this month’s edition of the Discourse Chronicle.

But before I sign off, let me call your attention to our active workgroups and the three committees (Data Access, Program Planning & Steering). To keep the momentum going, active communication is key. Some of our workgroups are even devising a nifty tracking system for proposals and projects. Plus, we’re resurrecting our Slack channel – come join the conversation in our lively workspace through this link: https://join.slack.com/t/discourseinpsychosis/shared_invite/zt-2hztam1m9-vVtV55v6zW0GS7A9MY7QyQ

Until next time,

Lena

Pavia Meeting Highlights:

Please find all the materials (slides, videos, and posters) from the meeting in Pavia here https://www.neplab.it/discourse/

All videos are uploaded on the NepLab YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/@NEPLab_IUSSPavia.

Thanks to Maddalena and Veronica who did all the work!

Discourse Metadatabase

Please see the attached file and add/update to our growing Discourse Metadatabase! Please contact Sunny Tang (stang3@northwell.edu) with any questions.

Discourse Committees and Work Groups

Please see the attached document for the Discourse Committees and Work Groups list of members.

Work Group Updates

Reminder: Call for Collaboration on Clinical Harmonization Effort

The clinical harmonization working group is undertaking an effort to harmonize methods for obtaining clinical ratings on thought disorder and speech and language disturbances. As a part of this effort, we are planning to look at ways to convert between rating scales, and/or creating a centralized factor-based approach. It would be particularly valuable to have participants rated on one or more of the following: TALD, TLI, TLC, SANS/SAPS, CDI. If you have clinical rating data that might be appropriate for this effort, please contact Frederike Stein (frederike.stein@staff.uni-marburg.de) or Sunny Tang (stang3@northwell.edu), and/or fill out this database with information on the data available: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DXQX2OY7hDVhP9qGyQNd6VzdTXgu83IT?usp=drive_link

Discourse Chronicle

Please see the attached PDF of Emre Bora’s Blog post.

Seminar Series 2024/2025

Please see below for the 2024 Discourse Seminar dates, speakers, and topics.

For your convenience, we will keep seminar details up to date on this public google calendar, which you can subscribe to: https://tinyurl.com/3b568arx

Additional Talks & Conferences

The upcoming 5th Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference (XPRAG.it 2024):

XPRAG.it, an Italian research network focusing on empirical research on pragmatic processing, is organizing its 5th Conference (XPRAG.it 2024), hosted by the San Camillo Hospital IRCCS (Venice Lido, Italy), on September 26-27, 2024. Given this venue, the main focus will be on pragmatic impairment, with invited speakers bringing expertise on developmental and acquired disorders.
Abstract submission deadline: May 5, 2024 (23:59 CET). Info: https://sites.google.com/view/xpragit2024/xprag-it-2024

Publications

Dalal, T., C., et al. (April, 2024) Speech based natural language profile before, during and after the onset of psychosis: A cluster analysis. ‘Digital Psychiatry” in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. https://doi.org/10.1111/acps.13685

Frau, F., Cerami, C., Dodich, A., Bosia, M., & Bambini, V. (May 2024). Weighing the role of social cognition and executive functioning in pragmatics in the schizophrenia spectrum: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Brain and language, 252, 105403. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105403

Sharkey RJ, et al. Differences in the neural correlates of schizophrenia with positive and negative formal thought disorder in patients with schizophrenia in the ENIGMA dataset. Molecular Psychiatry. 2024 Apr 26:1-1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02563-z

Zaher, F., et al. (April 2024). Speech markers to predict and prevent recurrent episodes of psychosis: A narrative overview and emerging opportunities. Schizophrenia Research, Volume 266, 2024,Pages 205-215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2024.02.036

Opportunities

PhD opportunity in Pavia, Italy:
A full-time PhD position within the program in “Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics (TEL)” (University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, Italy) will open soon. The PhD student will be supervised by Prof. Valentina Bambini. People interested in pursuing a PhD centered on the topics of language in psychosis, with a focus on pragmatics and extending also to neuropragmatics, could get in contact with Valentina Bambini (valentina.bambini@iusspavia.it). The programme duration is 3 years. Approximate gross salary: €16.243 (per year). Further information is available at the following link: https://www.iusspavia.it/en/education/doctoral-programmes/theoretical-and-experimental-linguistics

PhD opportunity in Language Sciences, in the area of language and psychosis, Barcelona, Spain:

This position is for a PhD researcher funded by the Synergy project DELTA-LANG, ‘The Delta of Language’, awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) and running from 2024-2029. The successful candidate will join the group of Prof. Wolfram Hinzen, https://www.upf.edu/web/grac in the Language Sciences department of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), as well as the group of Prof. Gustavo Deco at the Brain & Cognition center https://www.upf.edu/web/cbc. He/she will also become part of a wider European consortium comprising three other sites, the groups of Prof. Homan at the Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich, Prof. Sommer of the psychiatry department at the University Medical Center Groningen, and Prof. Elvevåg of the Department of Clinical Medicine at The Arctic University of Norway. Regular exchanges and visits to these other sites are foreseen.

Research Assistant in Psychology, Psychiatry & Linguistics in Barcelona, Spain:

We are looking for a highly motivated research assistant helping to coordinate collaborative research between the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and clinical partners in local hospitals, specifically the Centres Assistenials Emili Mira (CAEM), which is part of the Hospital del Mar Health care System (ParcdeSalutMar). The successful applicant will join the Grammar & Cognition (GraC) of the UPF and work in the frame of a Synergy grant awarded to Dr. Wolfram Hinzen and three co-PIs by the European Research Council. The aim of the grant is to understand language changes in psychosis and their underlying neural basis, with the ultimate aim of predicting relapse in psychosis.

Research Assistant in computational linguistics / AI / data science, in the area of language in psychosis opportunity in Barcelona, Spain:

This position is that of a starting-level researcher who will provide research support in our Synergy project DELTA-LANG, ‘The Delta of Language’, awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) and running from 2024-2029. The successful candidate will be welcomed in the group of Prof. Wolfram Hinzen, https://www.upf.edu/web/grac in the Language Sciences department of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and become part of a wider European consortium comprising three other sites, the groups of Prof. Homan at the Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich, Prof. Sommer of the psychiatry department at the University Medical Center Groningen, and Prof. Elvevåg of the Department of Clinical Medicine at the The Arctic University of Norway. Regular exchanges and visits to these other sites are foreseen.

Accomplishments & Awards

Drs. Palaniyappan, Achim, Voppel, Lavigne & team received Canadian Institute of Health Research – Strategic Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Award for the project “Predicting Psychotic Relapse using Speech-based Early-detection” (MOTS+).

Discourse Protocol

This protocol is intended for producing speech samples to be compiled into a multilingual, benchmark dataset to study language in psychosis. We currently have English, Spanish, German, French, Croatian, Turkish, Hindi, Italian, Serbian, Tamil, Mandarin Chinese, Czech, and Portuguese versions of the task administration protocol.

We are working on adding protocol versions in Swedish, Russian, Arabic, and Dutch as well (this is not uploaded yet but drop a line if you want to access them when ready).

Please email Dr. Maria Alonso for the latest versions.

Please email pdzialos@uwo.ca for any updates on grants, publications and events you want to share with the Discourse in Psychosis community.

Connect with DISCOURSE Colleagues! Join our Slack workspace with this link:

https://join.slack.com/t/discourseinpsychosis/shared_invite/zt-2hztam1m9-vVtV55v6zW0GS7A9MY7QyQ and stay in touch via X (@discourseinpsy)