Daniela Almeida Borges

I am a Psychiatry speciality trainee and MSc by Research student. I member of the Psychopharmacology & Emotion Research Laboratory, supervised by Prof Catherine Harmer and Prof Simon Kyle.

I am working on a Welcomme Trust funded project in which we are trying to understand how new drugs used for the treatment of insomnia (dual orexin antagonists) might affect some brain process (emotional processing, reinforcement learning and working memory) often also altered in affective disorders. We are planning a project using an experimental medicine approach to investigate the acute behavioural effects of daridorexant in healthy young volunteers. This study is part of a workpackage in a larger project aiming to understand how sleep, circadian rhythms, and resting state brain networks influence mental health, and in particular depression.

Prior to this course, I have completed an integrated Masters in Medicine and have worked for 10 years as a medical doctor. In particular, I have seven-years of clinical experience working in different NHS mental health services and I am about to start my last year of higher training in General Psychiatry. I have an interest in the interface between sleep and circadian disorders with psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions.