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Understanding the causes and mechanisms of mental illness

Basic Clinical Research – understanding the causes and mechanisms of mental illness, using experimental medicine approaches

Scientist holding beaker full of green liquid (stock photo)

Groups within this theme

We aim to understand processes of selective attention and action, learning and memory in the human brain. Through experiments in healthy volunteers and patients with brain disorders we seek to characterize how information processing networks respond (adaptively or maladaptively) when challenged by interference. Our motivation is to develop rational neurocognitive intervention strategies to help promote recovery from conditions such as depression and brain injury.

Translational NeuroStimulation Laboratory

Our research aims to understand how psychotropic drugs work at molecular level. By exploring this through clinical research in patients we contribute to the development of new evidence-based pharmacological treatments for severe mental illness.

Clinical Psychopharmacology

Using computer models of behaviour, we aim to better understand anxiety and depression, and to guide the development of novel treatments.

Computational Psychiatry

Blossom Early Adversity & Brain Health Programme is dedicated to investigating the effects of early life adversity on later life brain health, including mental health, cognition and dementia.

Early Adversity & Brain Health

Nearly a third of dementia cases can be prevented by modifying our lifestyle, in particular our cardiovascular health. While we know that “what’s good for the heart is good for the brain”, we still don’t entirely know why. Our group investigates this heart-brain link in detail, by studying how the health of our heart and large blood vessels affect the brain and memory as we grow older.

Heart and Brain Ageing Group

Developing new analysis tools for understanding human brain activity

Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity Analysis Group

Modifiable risk factors for dementia include those factors that can be altered or changed in some way (modified), usually for the better. The Lancet 2020 commission (Livingston et al., 2020) advocated that there are 12 risk factors which can be potentially modified to prevent or slow the progression of dementia. These are less education, hypertension, obesity, alcohol, traumatic brain injury (TBI), hearing loss, smoking, depression, physical inactivity, social isolation, diabetes and air pollution.

Modifying Dementia Risk

We are dedicated to testing and developing new ways of improving treatments for psychiatric disorders, and maintaining brain health during aging. A significant proportion of people suffering from disturbances of mood and memory, do not respond to the available medication, and so there is an urgency to supplement or provide an alternative to current therapies.

Neurobiology and Experimental Therapeutics

Why do some people suffer from depression and memory loss as they age, whereas others stay well for the whole of their lives? We examine the effect of genes and life history on ageing using neuropsychology and neuro-imaging techniques as part of large scale epidemiological and experimental medicine studies.

Neurobiology of Ageing

We explore how the brain processes emotional information and how this is influenced by brain chemicals and medicines. This helps us to understand disorders such as depression and anxiety and to understand and contribute to the development of drug and psychological treatments.

Psychopharmacology and Emotion Research Laboratory (PERL)

Neuroimaging provides a window into the living brain, and is an increasingly vital experimental medicine tool for neuro-psychiatric disease. With a particular focus on early and pre-clinical disease, we explore how the brain changes before symptoms take hold.

Translational Neuroimaging

The Translational Neuroscience and Dementia Research Group undertake translational research ranging from mechanisms to drug development, and from discovery to qualification of molecular and imaging biomarkers in both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease and in related dementia disorders. The group, led by Professor Noel Buckley, comprises molecular and cellular biology scientists, computational biologists and informaticians working with molecular, clinical and imaging datasets.
We have three main areas of activity, all aiming towards secondary prevention of dementia. By understanding disease mechanisms we seek potential therapeutics; through discovery of biomarkers we hope to enable preventative trials, and with informatics we utilise large biological and clinical datasets in the support of translational neuroscience.

Translational Neuroscience & Dementia Research