ERA-NET NEURON: The SNSF funds three projects on mental disorders
Fourteen transnational research consortia are funded under the umbrella of the 2018 NEURON call on mental disorders. Researchers from Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Bern will participate in three consortia.
Projects submitted in response to this call underwent a highly selective evaluation process. The groups of Daphne Bavelier (University of Geneva), Friedhelm Hummel (EPF Lausanne), Franz X. Vollenweider (University of Zurich) and Benoît Zuber (University of Bern) are among the 62 successful research groups from 11 European countries, Canada and Israel that will be collaborating in the selected projects.
Depression, alcohol addiction, schizophrenia
Three projects will be financially supported by the SNSF over the next three years. They will address questions relevant to major depressive disorders, alcohol addiction and schizophrenia.
The first project sees the involvement of Daphne Bavelier and Friedhelm Hummel. Together with their partners from Denmark, Israel and Latvia, they will attempt to develop novel, alternative treatment options for patients suffering from major depressive disorders, many of whom do not respond satisfactorily to conventional antidepressant interventions. In the second project, researchers from Denmark, France and Italy will collaborate with Franz X. Vollenweider, their research partner from Switzerland. The researchers will test the efficacy of psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug, for treating alcohol addiction. They will also study the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of this addiction at translational level. Finally, the researchers involved in the third project will investigate the molecular mechanisms and genetic traits that are associated with the onset and progression of schizophrenia. Benoît Zuber is one of the partners involved, the others are from France, Denmark and Latvia.
ERA-NET NEURON: Research in disease-related neuroscience
The ERA-NET Network of European Funding for Neuroscience Research (NEURON) supports basic, clinical and translational research in various fields of disease-related neuroscience. It aims to better understand brain diseases and their progression to pave the way for new or improved diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. The joint transnational call (JTC) launched by NEURON in 2018 seeks to facilitate multinational, collaborative research projects that will address important questions related to mental health and mental disorders.