Cardiff

You will first take part in an interview with a research worker to find out if the study is suitable for you. If you are eligible and agree to participate, we (the research team), will carry out further checks including reviewing your medical and drug treatment case notes. We will arrange a basic medical examination, routine blood tests and blood pressure to make sure there is no medical reason why you should not take part. This will include a routine test which looks at your heart called an ‘ECG’. This is a quick test and is something you may have experienced if you have had a stay in hospital. We will also ask you some questions about any medical conditions you may have, and about your general physical health. We will take a research blood sample for inflammation measures (called cytokines) and genetic analysis.

During this visit you will also carry out some standard tests of your thinking and reasoning skills. These assessments are widely used and are done at your own pace. We will give full instructions about the tasks before you do them.

If you agree, after the visit we will inform your GP about you taking part in the study and your GP may provide information to us about any relevant medical problems you may have. In the unlikely situation where there is an abnormal test result (i.e. abnormalities in blood tests, or in the brain scans), we would inform your GP/Consultant of these findings.

At your next visit we would like you to complete some standard questionnaires/interviews about some of the experiences you may have. We would like to audio record the interviews. The reason for this is so that we can concentrate on talking to you during the interview instead of writing things down. We can also use the recordings to help the researchers ensure they are conducting the interviews and completing the questionnaires correctly. We will ensure that any identifiable data is removed from the recordings so it will never be possible to identify you. We would also like to video record these interviews to further help us become better at conducting these. The recordings will be kept securely and only members of the research team would be able to view them. Once the study is completed these videos will be destroyed. If you wish not to be filmed, we will respect your wishes and not video record the interview.

During this visit we would also take images of your brain using different imaging techniques. There is no set order in which these scans are done. It may be that the scans will have to take place on separate days, or sometimes on the same day. We will discuss this with you. We briefly describe here each technique we would like to do and what would be involved:

• Proton MRS (magnetic resonance spectroscopy)
  MRS takes place in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. This will enable us to take pictures of your brain and to also measure chemical levels. There are no dangers or side-effects of any kind using this type of scanner. No chemicals, injections, or blood samples are involved, and there is also no radiation. You lie with your head inside a short tunnel in a magnetic field. The machine makes quite a lot of noise so you wear padded earphones and there is a microphone. You can listen to music and hear or speak to the operator.  Very occasionally people find this claustrophobic so you can press a button to come out if you don’t want to continue. The proton MRS will take about 45 minutes in the scanner.

• MEG (Magnetoencephalography)

  MEG is a brain imaging technique that allows people to measure brain function. When people do tasks such as simply looking at moving lights or memory tests, it is possible to measures differences in brain function. The aim of this technique would be to study whether there are differences in the coordination of brain functions between people with a history of psychosis and people without.

  The MEG recording involves you sitting upright in a scanner that covers a part of your head.  You will also have three small coils placed on your face using special skin-friendly tape: one on the forehead, near the nose, and two on the cheek, just in front of each ear. These coils measure the location of your head inside the scanner to help us make accurate measurements of brain activity. To remember where we placed these coils, we will be taking digital photographs of your face. These photographs will only be used to verify the coil locations and will be kept entirely confidential. We will also place several additional wires on your face, wrist and hand using skin-friendly tape and a paste. These wires allow us to measure factors that might affect the reading we get from the MEG scan so that we can exclude them, such as eye and muscle movements and your pulse. The wires do not send any signals and you will not feel anything other than the wires sitting on your skin.

  We will further obtain a digital representation of the shape of the top of your head. This is done by moving a digital pen over your head, brow and nose for about 5 minutes. The pen does not have any ink and will not scratch you. The shape of your head will help us understand where the signals we measure came from in the brain.

  The researcher will ask you to perform a simple task that involves seeing visual images on a screen and responding by pressing some buttons. The MEG scan consists of short sessions with pauses in between, lasting for 50 minutes in total.

For patients with psychosis, after 12 months from finishing the study, we would like to see you again. At this visit we will repeat the questionnaires/interviews and the tests of thinking and reasoning skills.