John Aitken, Bishoy Pramanik, Richard Qian
Project Question: Can we confirm the results of the original study and find differences in transcriptomes of the anterior cingulate cortex between patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and control patients?
In our project, we are testing the results of the original study which found the "most significant disease-related differences” between control samples and schizophrenia samples in the anterior cingulate cortex. We are conducting our own analysis to confirm or challenge these differences and also present any additional findings.
We recognize the complex nature of psychological disorders and our study only analyzes gene expression data (and accompanying metadata) from the dataset.
A more exploratory question: Are there any differences between the RNA-sequenced transcriptomes in the nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate cortex, or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex between patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder and control patients?