New Section Launch: Computational Psychiatry

Psychiatry computational

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Frontiers in Psychiatry is pleased to announce the launch of its newest section, Computational Psychiatry, led by Dr Qiyong Gong of the West China Hospital, Sichuan University in China.

Dr Gong stresses that the biggest challenge facing the field of computational psychiatry today is how to speed up the clinical translation of the scientific discoveries resulting from imaging advances, citing the new clinical subspecialty of psychoradiology as a key example of this.

He also highlights several other themes he hopes this new section will help to address, including:

  1. standardization of imaging acquisition, data processing and imaging analysis algorithms

  2. improving the accuracy and sensitivity of biomarker detection

  3. developing computational models for optimally integrating the multimodal imaging and multicentre data

  4. empowering the radiology for psychiatry and clinical psychology

“Evidence continues to accumulate indicating that computational imaging studies of brain connectivity, anatomy, and function will be useful for such purposes in ways that could significantly improve personalized medicine for patients suffering from psychotic disorders.”

Dr Gong aims for this new section to help “accelerate the clinical translation of research and hence remarkably reshape the field of psychiatry as a whole”. Open Access will be important in achieving this goal, he states, as it will maximise the availability and visibility of state of the art research.

He aligns his vision for the section with the broad aims of the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria project. Namely, that research within the field of computational psychiatry has long placed emphasis on using imaging data to provide biomarkers for psychotic disorders. As such, there’s an urgent need for brain-based biomarkers within psychiatry for long-term treatment development and the improvement of clinical practice.

Computational Psychiatry is now open for high-quality submissions and welcomes Research Topic proposals.