L Elliot Hong
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Neuroscience
Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) are serious mental illnesses that bring hallucinations and depression. People with these disorders also die earlier, often from heart and blood vessel disease.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
schizophrenia
psychosis prevention
familial high risk
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through Apr 2031
What they work on
- Test whether 16 weeks of family-based risk reduction therapy normalizes an MRI-based biomarker of schizophrenia-like brain patterns in children aged 9–18 with family risk but no psychotic symptoms.
- Test whether modifiable risk factors contribute to schizophrenia-like brain patterns in at-risk children before any psychosis, using MRI and clinical and neuropsychological assessments.
- Test whether intense theta burst rTMS targeting both insulas and lateral prefrontal cortex engages a depression-linked brain network in schizophrenia, measured by fMRI against sham stimulation.
- Determine whether new rTMS stimulation site and mode combinations alter functional connectivity in circuits behind medication-resistant auditory hallucinations, in a randomized sham-controlled trial.
- Identify vascular and stress-related body-brain pathways that drive faster brain aging, including white matter changes, and cardiovascular disease in schizophrenia, using vascular biomarkers and brain imaging.
More about the research
Many symptoms resist current treatments, and prevention usually begins only once early warning signs of psychosis appear, when it is often too late. Across four projects, the lab uses brain imaging to find measurable brain patterns linked to the illness, then tests whether new treatments or prevention efforts change those patterns. The projects span prevention in at-risk children, magnetic brain stimulation for hard-to-treat symptoms, and the role of blood vessels in early aging.
Why it matters
People with schizophrenia spectrum disorders face persistent hallucinations, hard-to-treat depression and shortened lives from cardiovascular disease. This work could yield more targeted brain stimulation treatments for these symptoms and an imaging biomarker to guide prevention in children at family risk. It could also show when and how to screen patients for vascular problems, so prevention and treatment start earlier.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Desmond Oathes
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Establish that TMS targeted with resting-state fMRI connectivity modulates the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), a deep mood-related region, using interleaved TMS/fMRI to record brain responses to stimulation.
Zafiris Daskalakis
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare standard, clustered and sham maintenance rTMS over six months in 75 adults with treatment-resistant depression, testing which best sustains connectivity between the DLPFC and SGC measured by TMS-EEG.
Ying-Hui Chou
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Determine whether excitatory or inhibitory rTMS, magnetic pulses delivered through the scalp and aimed at the hippocampus, improves memory more than sham stimulation, in a randomized crossover trial of 60 adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.
The school
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: 25 labs on PI Pages, $419M a year on research, 340 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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