Nimhans unveils digital repository for mental health research

Bengaluru: The National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans), in collaboration with Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, has launched CALM-Brain, a digital repository of clinical, neuroimaging, behavioural and genetic data on brain structure and function in persons with psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, dementia, and substance abuse.

Researchers and clinicians aim to study neuropsychiatric diseases in the Indian context to understand them for early intervention, progression, and underlying causes.

The study also involves testing family members of patients to understand the condition and provide personalised treatment or precision medicine.

This longitudinal dataset incorporates multiple ways of studying brain function in neuropsychiatric patients, including Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI), Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), electroencephalogram (EEG), cognitive observations, eye tracking, genetic analyses of blood samples, and clinical assessments.

The dataset is also linked to a biorepository of stem cells, which can be used to conduct biological research in psychiatry to study the origins of severe mental illnesses.

Currently, the repository contains data from over 2,000 persons from 900 families.

Phase-wise patient data-gathering for CALM-Brain began in 2016 by a group of researchers from Nimhans and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) as part of the Accelerator Programme for Discovery in Brain Disorders using Stem Cells (ADBS project), jointly funded by the Department of Biotechnology and Pratiksha Trust.

Scientists said studying large numbers of families with both affected and unaffected members can help identify robust neurocognitive biomarkers.

Dr Pratima Murthy, former director of Nimhans, said, “At the beginning we look at the affected members. Then we see the family members, who do not have any disease right now, but may have characteristics that can develop into a disorder later. We can do early interventions to prohibit people from having disorders."