Dr. Raymond Chan of the Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience (NACN) Laboratory and the Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, had organized a symposium titled “Endophenotypes for schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Evidence from neurological, cognitive and emotional findings” at the 39th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) in Boston during February 2-5th 2011.

The INS is a multi-disciplinary non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing communication among the scientific disciplines which contribute to the understanding of brain-behavior relationships. It is one of the most influential societies of neuropsychology. The Society currently has more than 4500 members throughout the world. The Society holds two meetings per year.  The North American meeting is held in February and the non-North American meeting is held in July.

During this Boston meeting, Dr. Chan had invited international renowned scholars of neuropsychologist in the schizophrenia research to present their most updated findings on schizophrenia The speakers included Prof. Ruben Gur from the University of Pennsylvania, Profs. Larry Seidman , Matcheri Keshavan, and William Stone from Harvard Medical School. Moreover, Mr. YAN chao (a first-year doctoral student) also attended this meeting and made a poster presentation on “Do Individuals with Schizotypal Personality Disorder Reflect Problems on Affective Experience and Motivation? A Preliminary Behavioral Study”.

After the meeting, Dr. Chan and Mr. Yan were invited to visit Prof. Larry Seidman’s centre at Harvard Medical School and made a presentation to Prof. Larry Seidman’s team on the updated findings of neurological soft signs and its implications for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Afterwards, they started off active discussion and explored research potential with Prof. William Stone and Prof. Matcheri Keshavan on schizotypy and neurological soft signs, respectively. Moreover, Dr. Chan was also invited to visit Susan Whitfield-Gabrielli’s Lab at MIT and made another presentation on neuroimaging of schizophrenia to her lab members. They also explored future research potential on imaging work in schizophrenia.

In summary, this trip was to strengthen the existing collaboration between Dr. Chan and Prof. William Stone, and started off potential work with Profs. Seidman and Keshavan at Harvard Medical School, and Prof. Whitfield-Gabrielli at MIT. It was a fruitful visit to facilitate further collaboration between scholars in Boston and Beijing.