A Rutgers researcher and a professor from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey are developing optical illusions to help diagnose and treat schizophrenia in a collaboration that has been going on for years.

Steven Silverstein, Professor of Psychiatry at the RWJ Medical School and Director of Schizophrenia Research at UMDNJ-University Behavioral HealthCare, says schizophrenia can be difficult to diagnose and treat because currently there are no lab tests for the illness. However, it has been widely known that people suffering from schizophrenia aren't often tricked by optical illusions. Stevens heard of the work of Thomas Papathomas -- Director of the Rutgers Laboratory of Vision Research at the Center for Cognitive Science -- which focuses on how the brain interprets visual information. The two began to collaborate and believe their illusions can one day be used not only to identify people with Schizophrenia, but also detect how well different treatments are working.

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