Eden Maness

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a psychiatric condition encompassing two distinct symptomatologies: positive symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, and negative symptoms, including motivational and cognitive deficits. Although current antipsychotics, which reduce dopamine overactivity in the brain, are able to provide relief for sensory disturbances, they either fail to alleviate or exacerbate impairments of motivation, attention, learning, and memory. Because the severity of negative symptoms more accurately predicts functional and clinical outcomes, there is a substantial need for medications that more holistically treat this debilitating illness. The lateral hypothalamic orexinergic system acts as a gatekeeper of several neurotransmitter networks involved in not only homeostatic regulation, but motivational activation and cognition as well, and in recent years has gained interest as a novel pharmacotherapeutic target for SZ. A recent experiment from our lab offers additional support, as blocking orexin neurons was able to reduce sustained attentional impairments and response deficits in a commonly-employed rat model of SZ. As such, the medicinal potential and clinical application of orexin receptor inhibitors for the treatment of SZ will be discussed, with particular focus on attentional and motivational restoration.

Eden Maness is a third-year Ph.D. candidate pursuing her doctorate in neuroscience through the Applied Science Department at William & Mary. Her research explores the underlying neurobiology of attentional processing and performance through a clinical lens. In particular, her dissertation endeavors to parse the potential of various experimental compounds to restore attentional function in rodent models of psychosis.