January Newsletter | 2026 Issue #1

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:

As Montreal gets buried under snow this week, I’m warming up by thinking about sunshine and our upcoming meeting in Pavia! We’re thrilled to announce continued funding to support diverse Early Career Researchers with some fantastic awards:

7 ECR Awards (C$500 each); Bourgeois Chair Prize (C$1,000); DISCOURSE Open Science Award (C$500); DISCOURSE Rising Star Award (C$500) and 6 additional IUSS Travel Grants through the EFC Project. See below for the details on how to apply.

Huge thanks to Prof. Valentina Bambini for hosting us and securing the EFC grants,

and Dr. Natalia Mota for leading our selection panel for Discourse awards.

We are looking forward to receiving poster submissions and continue the tradition of poster awards started by Dr. Sunny Tang and Rui He last year!

See below for registration details, posters and award information. Some deadlines are coming up real soon. We can’t wait to see you in Pavia on March 30-31!

See you all soon,

Lena

Discourse Satellite Meeting 2026

The 4th Consortium Discourse Meeting: Language and Thought in the Brain and in Mental Health. This will take place at the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS in Pavia, Italy hosted by Dr. Valentina Bambini and supported by EU’s Educating Future Citizens (EFC) initiative on March 30th and 31st, 2026. This year, we are planning an exciting day of training workshops in addition to the usual 1-day event. Mark your calendar. The meeting will also be live streamed to allow for virtual attendance.

MEETING REGISTRATION

If you have already registered to attend the meeting no need to re-register. For those who have not registered please do so, as soon as possible as we have limited capacity.

If you previously registered and can NO Longer attend please notify Betsy Schaefer email bschaefe@uwo.ca as soon as possible so others may attend.

*Each individual should register separately (e.g. research coordinators), even if they are traveling from the same group.

CALL FOR POSTERS AND ORAL PRESENTATIONS!

Poster Submission Deadline – February 14th

Approximately 18 posters will be selected from submissions

Submission Guidelines

• Title and abstract (250-word limit)

• Preference will be given to posters and talks not presented at SIRS

Please fill out the abstract submission form below. Notifications will be emailed by the end of February

DISCOURSE Awards Announcement

Through the generous support from Francois Bourgeois Foundation’s to the McGill University and Douglas Research Centre via the Monique H. Bourgeois Chair, DISCOURSE Awards will be offered this year for 10 eligible applicants who are attending the 4th Consortium meeting at Pavia.

• DISCOURSE ECR Awards (7 grants worth Canadian Dollars C$500 each)

• Bourgeois Chair Prize (C$1000: Preference for work that highlights developmental challenges)

• Open Science Award (C$500: Preference for work that leads to shared data, codes and other collaboration-enhancing research outputs)

• DISCOURSE Rising Star Award (C$500: based on contributions to the DISCOURSE community)

  
  

  These awards are open to trainees at all levels and early career researchers (<5 years in their first career-level position e.g., Assistant Professor or Lecturer). We need a motivation letter to be emailed to Betsy Schaefer (bschaefe@uwo.ca) by February 7th 2026. If you are a PhD student you also can apply to the IUSS Travel Grant (see below). If you have already sent the motivation letter to Betsy – pleae do not resend it.

IUSS Travel Grant Announcement

The EFC project will award n. 6 travel grants to encourage and support the participation of PhD students. For students travelling from Italy (n. 4 grants worth €500 each) and for students travelling from abroad (n. 2 grants worth €1,000 each). PhD students who are willing to participate in the event can consult the call for applications at the following link (https://titulus-iusspavia.cineca.it/albo/viewer?view=files%2F000368421-IUSSCLE-03c9b75f-1317-4c0e-8f32-115ef62c9843-000.pdf) and submit their application by January 31, 2026. Further information is available on the event website (https://www.neplab.it/discourse_home).

Discourse Chronicle

Please see the attached PDF of Natália Bezerra Mota’s Blog post.

We are looking for volunteers to submit blogs for upcoming Discourse Newsletters. If you’re interested in contributing please contact Betsy Schaefer bschaefe@uwo.ca.

Psychosis Bank Update

Please see the attached document, which includes approved researchers with

Psychosis Bank Data Access.

Discourse Impact Statement

We continually track total grant amounts that is generated through the existence of the Discourse consortium – this is important in order to prepare impact statements and obtain further resources for the network. So, please reach out to Betsy Schaefer bschaefe@uwo.ca with any new grant funds you have received since March 2024-2025, that reference our network, working groups and/or protocol in funding applications.

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. Ranjini Garani from McGill University will be contacting the various leads periodically to facilitate the exchange of information across the channels.

Work Group Updates

Please see the attached documents for the updates from each working group.

Seminar Series 2026

Our seminar series for 2025-2026 has been hosted by the Theory, Mechanisms and Models group, thanks to Drs. Maria Francisca Alonso Sanchez and Gina Kuperberg.

Please stay tuned for announcements about our next Discourse Seminar series, resuming again in September 2026.

All past Discourse Seminar YouTube recordings from 2021 to 2025 can be found on our website https://discourseinpsychosis.org/seminars-meetings/

January 23, 2026 seminar recording is pending

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

Publications

Ahuja S, Zaher F, Palaniyappan L. Quantitative natural language processing markers of psychoactive drug effects: A pre-registered systematic review. J Psychopharmacol. 2025 Sep;39(9):940-949. doi: 10.1177/02698811251319455.

Ayesa-Arriola R, Martinez-Asensi C, Díaz-Pons A, et al. Exploring the interplay between language use and cognitive function in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Insights from patients, first degree relatives, and healthy controls. Schizophr Res Cogn. 2025 Oct 17;43:100398. doi: 10.1016/j.scog.2025.100398.

Bambini V, Frau F, Bischetti L, et al. From semantic concreteness to concretism in schizophrenia: An automated linguistic analysis of speech produced in figurative language interpretation. Clin Linguist Phon. 2025 Nov;39(11):1070-1092. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2025.2451961. Epub 2025 Feb 21. PMID: 39981803.

Berretta SA, Oliver LD, Hyatt CS, et al. Domain-specific associations between social cognition and aggression in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Schizophr Res Cogn. 2025 Apr 9;41:100361. doi: 10.1016/j.scog.2025.100361. PMID: 40255243; PMCID: PMC12008152.

Bressler M, Mangiaterra V, Canal P, et al. Figurative Archive: an open dataset and web-based application for the study of metaphor. Sci Data. 2026 Jan 7. doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-06459-7. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41501100.

Ciampelli S, de Boer JN, Voppel AE, et al. Syntactic network analysis in first-episode psychosis: toward generalizability. Schizophrenia (Heidelb). 2025 Dec 3;11(1):147. doi: 10.1038/s41537-025-00693-z. PMID: 41339362; PMCID: PMC12675623.

Cho S, Cong Y, Mehta A, et al. Unique signatures in verbal fluency task performance in schizophrenia and depression. Schizophr Res Cogn. 2025 Nov 26;43:100407. doi: 10.1016/j.scog.2025.100407. PMID: 41376860; PMCID: PMC12689178.

Çokal D, Aloraini A, Palominos CF, et al. Three dimensions of speech coherence in people with early psychosis and their family members. Schizophrenia (Heidelb). 2025 Dec 17;12(1):2. doi: 10.1038/s41537-025-00703-0. PMID: 41408070; PMCID: PMC12775532.

Palaniyappan L, Sabesan P. Quantitative semiology: harnessing AI-generated teaching signals in psychiatry. J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2025 Oct 1;50(5):E318-E322. doi: 10.1139/jpn-25-0142

Palominos C, Stein F, Kircher T, et al. Lexical meaning is lower dimensional in psychosis. Sci Rep. 2025 Dec 5;16(1):859. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-30443-1. PMID: 41350597; PMCID: PMC12780149.

Petit N, Mengarelli F, Geoffray Cassar MM, et al. When Do Pragmatic Abilities Peak? Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates-French Version Psychometric Properties Across the Lifespan. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2025 Nov 11;68(11):5493-5504. doi: 10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00844. Epub 2025 Oct 20. PMID: 41115253.

Sharpe V, Mackinley M, Nour Eddine S, et al. Selective Insensitivity to Global Versus Local Linguistic Context in Speech Produced by Patients With Untreated Psychosis and Positive Thought Disorder. Biol Psychiatry. 2026 Jan 15;99(2):154-164. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2025.06.001. Epub 2025 Jun 10. PMID: 40506005.

Tang SX, Foroughi M, Brinen AP, et al. Preliminary Findings From an Augmented Reality (AR) App Delivering Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy for Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia. Early Interv Psychiatry. 2026 Jan;20(1):e70119. doi: 10.1111/eip.70119. PMID: 41496485; PMCID: PMC12775644.

Voppel A, Ciampelli S, Kircher T, et al. Analysis of conceptual overlap among formal thought disorder rating scales in psychosis: a systematic semantic synthesis. Schizophrenia (Heidelb). 2025 Dec 15;12(1):9. doi: 10.1038/s41537-025-00712-z. PMID: 41398324; PMCID: PMC12820080.

Zimmerer V, Tsoukala A, Çokal D, et al. The relationship between language disorder and thought disorder: Comparing micro- and macrostructure of spoken narratives of people with aphasia and people with schizophrenia. Cortex. 2025 Dec 31;195:81-95. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.12.006. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41539088.

Accomplishments & Awards

Principal Investigator: Dr. Laura A. Wortinger has been awarded funding 11,902,000 NOK by the Norwegian Research Council for the Project: “PlacLANG: Linking placental function and language development for early prediction of schizophrenia” 2026-2028. PlacLANG is an ambitious and innovative research project aimed to identify factors that confer resilience or increase vulnerability for psychotic disorders. The project will investigate how placental omics and obstetric complications influence brain and language development in offspring who later develop schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), and how these early-life factors relate to brain function and language disturbances in adolescents with SSD. Dr. Stener Nerland is leading the implementation of Discourse protocol for this project.

Discourse Protocol

The Discourse Protocol is now being used around the world for harmonized data collection. Most recently, Danish version has been completed and is being put to use in a new longitudinal study (thanks to Nikolai Albert fromOPUS PCK- Team).

Please take a look at our Discourse in Psychosis website, which now has within the Membership Directory Files a folder containing translations of the Discourse Protocol, which can be found here. https://discourseinpsychosis.org/resources/

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)