National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), department of psychiatry's assistant professor, Dr Ganesan Venkatasubramanian has bagged three awards for his efforts in the area of schizophrenia research.

The first honour was the Marfatia award for the best research paper presentation at the annual national conference of the Indian Psychiatric Society. For this award, Dr Venkatasubramanian had presented some of the novel functional MRI findings related to emotion recognition in subjects at risk for schizophrenia.

The second award was the Young Psychiatrist Award from the Indian Psychiatric Society given away for the first time at the annual event. This year the Society decided to honour young psychiatrists and Dr Ganesan Venkatasubramanian fitted the slot. The event was held at Agra.

The third honour was Poona Psychiatrists Association Award for the best paper published in psychiatry by a member of the Indian Psychiatric Society. Here a panel of experts evaluated the contents to adjudge the winner. In the case of Dr Ganesan Venkatasubramanian, his paper examined the brain abnormalities in schizophrenia patients using a new analysis called 'Cortical Thickness' based on an automated parcellation method on never treated schizophrenia patients. In this study, these patients were found to have significant deficiencies in pre-frontal cortex. This paper was published in the international psychiatric journal 'Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica'.

Dr Venkatasubramanian has been known for his award winning efforts. Last year too he bagged three awards which included Young Biotechnologist award instituted by the Department of Biotechnology, National Academy of Sciences India (NASI) Platinum Jubilee Young Scientist Award under the bio medical sciences category. In addition, he was also listed in 'Marquis Who is Who'. The awards are a boost to perform and provide the best to schizophrenia patients, he said.