Schizophrenia is a neuropsychiatric disorder that afflicts one in 100 people. Gillian O’Driscoll, PhD, is working to improve our understanding of schizophrenia by studying populations at high risk for the disorder, such as relatives of schizophrenic patients. People at high risk for schizophrenia often have subtle cognitive and behavioral deficits that indicate that their brain function is different long before the appearance of any clinical symptoms. For example, a large proportion of schizophrenic patients and their relatives have abnormal eye movements, something that is uncommon in the general population.

Gillian O’Driscoll and her students use neuroimaging (PET and fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation to identify differences in brain function between individuals at high and low risk for schizophrenia. They are also working to relate these differences to genes, in collaboration with Ridha Joober, MD, PhD. The goal of this research is to understand what makes a brain prone to develop schizophrenia and to better understand the path from genetic risk for schizophrenia to schizophrenia itself.

Gillian O’Driscoll did her PhD and postdoctoral work at Harvard University on markers of risk for schizophrenia, including abnormal eye movements. She then joined the faculty of McGill University in the departments of psychology and psychiatry, and joined the Douglas Institute Research Centre in 1995. Her particular areas of expertise are in risk for schizophrenia and eye movements. She also studies Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a common childhood disorder that is thought to involve some of the same brain structures as schizophrenia.