Psychology: Scott Sponheim

Scott Sponheim

Staff Psychologist, Minneapolis VA Medical Center Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, U of MN
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Psychology, U of MN

sponh001@umn.edu
Sponheim Psychiatry's web page

Education

Ph.D., 1993, University of Minnesota

Sponheim

Statement of Interests

Dr. Sponheim is a staff psychologist at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, an Assistant Professor in the Deparment of Psychiatry, and advises graduate and undergraduate students as an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Sponheim's research and clinical work focuses on individuals with severe and persistent psychopathology. Through VA and NIH funding Dr. Sponheim investigates cognitive and brain-based abnormalities found in schizophrenia patients and their first-degree relatives and tests genes thought to confer risk for psychosis for association with these abnormalities. Select cognitive deficitsare important to schizophrenia because they appear to reflect how genes have made the brain vulnerable to psychosis in some individuals. Cognitive abnormalities also have been shown to influence symptomatology and outcome in schizophrenia. The investigations in his laboratory have largely used electrical fields of the brain as indices of brain dysfunction in psychotic patients and their relatives. However; recently he has extended his examination of brain abnormalities in schizophrenia by using magnetoencephalography to study magnetic fields of the brain. Increasing understanding of cerebral anomalies in schizophrenia will help guide the development of treatments that directly target biological bases for schizophrenic symptomatology, and assist in identifying the genetic basis of the disorder.

Selected Publications

Laes, J.R., Sponheim, S.R. (in press). Does Cognition Predict Community Function Only in Schizophrenia?: A Study of Schizophrenia Patients, Bipolar Affective Disorder Patients, and Community Control Subjects. Schizophrenia Research.

Sponheim, S.R., Stanwyck, J.J., McGuire, K.A. (in press). Neural Anomalies During Sustained Attention in First-Degree Biological Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients. Biological Psychiatry.

Davenport, N.O., Sponheim, S.R., Stanwyck, J.J. (in press). Neural Anomalies During Visual Search in Schizophrenia Patients and Unaffected Siblings of Schizophrenia Patients. Schizophrenia Research.

Richter H.O., Costello P., Sponheim S.R., Lee J.T., Pardo J.V. (2004). Functional neuroanatomy of the human near/far response to blur cues: eye-lens accommodation/vergence to point targets varying in depth. European Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 2722-32.

Sponheim, S.R., Steele, V.S., McGuire, K.A. (2004). Verbal Memory Processing in Schizophrenia Patients and Biological Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients: Intact Implicit Memory, Impaired Explicit Recollection. Schizophrenia Research, 71, 339-348.

Sponheim, S.R., Surerus-Johnson, C., Leskela, J., Dieperink, M.E. (2003). Proverb interpretation in schizophrenia: The significance of symptomatology and cognitive processes. Schizophrenia Research, 65: 117-123

Sponheim, S.R., Iacono, W.G., Thuras, P.D., Beiser, M. (2001). Using biological indices to classify schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Schizophrenia Research, 50, 139-150.

Sponheim, S.R., Clementz, B.A., Iacono, W.G., Beiser, M. (2000). Clinical and biological concomitants of resting state EEG power abnormalities in schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 48, 1088-1097.