October Newsletter | 2025 Issue #3

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:

Hello all,

DISCOURSE has grown to a 363-member network.

Collectively, we have all raised $44.45 Million from EU, CIHR, NIH, MRC-UK, Wellcome and many other national funders to advance language-focused research that uses DISCOURSE resources. This is a tremendous ‘return’ for a spontaneously formed network!

With that background, I am pleased to post the First Announcement for our 4th Consortium Meeting: Language and thought in the brain and in mental health. This will take place at IUSS in Pavia, hosted by Dr. Valentina Bambini and supported by EU’s Educating Future Citizens initiative on March 30 and 31st, 2026. We are planning an exciting day of training workshops in addition to the usual 1-day event. Mark your calendar. As usual we will support Early Career Researchers with Travel Awards and there will be prizes for presentations as well. For more information, reach out to Betsy at Betsy.Schaefer@lhsc.on.ca

The Psychosis TalkBank repository system currently hosts 890 speech samples in 4 languages (Turkish, English, Portuguese and Spanish), with more to come soon. We have connected several user groups to contributors in the last few months.

Collating this data made some of us reflect on the “Life Behind Data” – the efforts of patients and caregivers in bringing the raw materials for research to table. More on that later, but for now, scroll below to see many updates from the network, including the inclusive DISCOURSE authorship guidelines approved by our Workgroups.

See you all soon!

Lena

Discourse Chronicle

Please see the attached PDF of Estée Ballès Blog post.

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

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@lhsc.on.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 exchange of information across the channels.

Work Group Updates

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

Seminar Series 2025

Our seminar series are hosted by the Theory, Mechanisms and Models group this year, thanks to Drs. Maria Francisca Alonso Sanchez and Gina Kuperberg.

Please take a look below at the speakers and dates for the remaining Fall/Winter Discourse seminars.

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

Join all seminar dates via zoom ID: 4198495066 link: https://reuna.zoom.us/j/4198495066

Special Issue

“Language in psychosis: a multidisciplinary approach”

We are pleased to announce the upcoming special issue to be published soon in the Journal of Neuropsychologia in the Language section edited by Valentina Bambini.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/neuropsychologia

The Special Issue will be guest edited by Marta Bosia, Lena Palaniyappan, Benjamin Straube and Lin Wang.

The focus of the issue is on neural underpinnings of language in psychosis. Submissions of studies exploring connections between language and brain function with theoretical and clinical implications are highly encouraged.

Submission Open Date: 01/09/2024

Final Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30/09/2025

Publications

Arslan, B., Kizilay, E., Turan, Y. E. et al.(2025). Computational linguistic investigation in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. Psychiatry research, 351, 116633. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116633

Ayesa-Arriola, R., Martinez-Asensi, C., Díaz-Pons, A., Ortiz-García de la Foz, V., Parás, C., El Mouslih, C., Sattari, R., Incera, S., & Palaniyappan, L. (2026). Exploring the interplay between language use and cognitive function in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Insights from patients, first degree relatives, and healthy controls. Schizophrenia Research: Cognition, 43, 100398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scog.2025.100398 (This work provides the first published full description of the DISCOURSE protocol in Spanish)

Bambini V, Battaglini C, Frau F. et al. On the inherent yet dynamic link between metaphor and Theory of Mind in middle childhood: meta-analytic evidence from a research programme bridging experimental pragmatics and developmental psychology. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2025 Aug 14;380(1932):20230489. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0489.

Bambini V, Lecce S. At the heart of human communication: new views on the complex relationship between pragmatics and Theory of Mind. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2025 Aug 14;380(1932):20230486. doi:10.1098/rstb.2023.0486.

Bilgrami, Z.R., Castro, E., Agurto, C. et al. Collecting language, speech acoustics, and facial expression to predict psychosis and other clinical outcomes: strategies from the AMP® SCZ initiative. Schizophr 11, 125 (2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41537-025-00669-z

Dalal, T. C., Park, M. T. M., Silva, A..et al. (2024, April 13). A psychopathological theory-driven early relapse prediction model using speech and language in psychosis. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dr329

Frau F, Bosia M, Bischetti L. et al. Ten years of using the APACS test: a multistudy cross-diagnostic analysis of pragmatic profiles and their relationship with Theory of Mind. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2025 Aug 14;380(1932):20230495. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0495.

Gutiérrez E, Quesada C, DeFraites E, Harper DJ, Mandavia AD. Interpretable LLM–Based Detection of Loose Associations Using Synthetic Speech Data in Early Psychosis. Schizophrenia Bulletin. 2025 Sep 5:sbaf125.

Mehta A, Nikzad AH, Cong Y. et al. Sentiment in speech is associated with symptom severity in psychosis. Cogn Neuropsychiatry. 2025 May;30(3):199-210. doi: 10.1080/13546805.2025.2539159.

Melshin, G., DiMaggio, A., Zeramdini, N. et al. Taking a look at your speech: identifying diagnostic status and negative symptoms of psychosis using convolutional neural networks. NPP—Digit Psychiatry Neurosci 3, 19 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44277-025-00040-1

Silva, M., Ahrens, J., Meister, F., Palaniyappan, L. Speech Markers as Longitudinal Predictors of Youth Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Early Intervention in Psychiatry. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eip.70102

Accomplishments & Awards

New project funding has been awarded to PI: Martina Sekulić Sović and the University of Zagreb (Recovery and Resilience Facility – European Commission) entitled “Mapping language and speech markers in a transdiagnostic model of atypical language and speech processes – MAPMARK”. The duration of the project is from October 2025 to 2029. The total grant awarded is €120,000 to conduct research using the DISCOURSE HR protocol for schizophrenia and the MLSE test for primary progressive aphasia. The project collaborators from the DISCOURSE consortium include Aleksandar Savić, María Francisca Alonso, Rosa Ayesa Arriola and Christina Manouilidou. This project will play a significant role in advancing research activities in Croatia.

New project funding (National Institutes of Health) has been awarded to PI: Sunny Tang. The project is entitled “Vital Signs for Psychosis: Personalized Longitudinal Markers of Psychosis Severity Using Automated Speech and Language Analysis”. The duration of the project is August 2025 to May 2030. The total grant awarded is 3,989,464 USD. This study aims to develop personalized adaptive models using automated speech/language analysis to generate precise, objective markers of concurrent psychosis severity. Innovative computational approaches will extract speech and language representations and use deep learning as well as algorithmic approaches to optimize individual-level symptom prediction accuracy over time.

New project fellowship (UK Research and Innovation – UKRI) has awarded its prestigious Future Leaders Fellowship to King’s researcher Dr Sarah Morgan, Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Engineering (Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine. The project is entitled “Predicting psychosis outcomes from speech and brain connectivity: PROSPECT”. The duration of the project is for 4 years (2026-2030) with a possible additional 3-year extension to 2033. The total fellowship award is £1.7 million. This study seeks to develop innovative AI tools that predict patient symptom evolution. Dr. Morgan collaborates with clinicians, AI specialists, and individuals with lived psychosis experience to ensure the tools’ trustworthiness and patient-clinician needs. This work aims to reshape psychosis management, enabling earlier, more personalized treatments and patient self-monitoring.

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)