OXITED - Oxford Improving Treatment for Emotional Disorders
- 01865 618320
- andrea.reinecke@psych.ox.ac.uk
- Anxiety
Our work combines cognitive neuroscience, applied clinical psychology and pharmacology to investigate the basic mechanisms of CBT and psychopharmacological treatments to find out what exactly it is that makes patients get better.
At least one in three people suffer from an anxiety or depressive disorder at some point in their life. The most effective treatment for these conditions is cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), but courses are long and cost-intensive, access to treatment is difficult, and there is a subgroup of patients who do not get better at all. Our work combines cognitive neuroscience, applied clinical psychology and pharmacology to investigate the basic mechanisms of CBT and psychopharmacological treatments, that is, to find out what exactly it is that makes patients get better. Such knowledge will ultimately help us to improve and develop novel treatment strategies, by combining psychological and pharmacological interventions logically based on their fundamental effects. Our research approaches include experimental-behavioural designs that allow us to indirectly measure patients' information processing, and magnet resonance imaging approaches that more directly assess brain activity (functional magnet resonance imaging) or brain levels of certain neurochemicals (magnet resonance spectroscopy).
We currently have three major studies underway:
Adolescent research
Our work aims to improve treatments for young people with anxiety. In a first step, we investigate in this study whether a safe, licensed blood pressure drug can improve learning in teenagers. Seeing such an effect would suggest that if combined with CBT, the medication may improve clinical response.
Young adult research
This study aims to start exploring whether a protein naturally occurring in the body may be able to predict how likely a person is to develop anxiety in the future. Such information would help the more efficient planning of strategies that may prevent the development of an anxiety disorder in young people.
Panic research
In this study, we would like to test whether combining a single-session of CBT with losartan can improve effects on anxiety, and what the underlying brain mechanisms of such an enhancement effect are. We would like to test two groups of people with panic attacks: one who receives CBT after having taken a single capsule of losartan, and one who receives CBT after having taken a placebo capsule.
Our team
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Andrea Reinecke
Associate Professor
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Sanika Kulkarni
DPhil Student
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Rowan Haslam
DPhil Student
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Helena Jelenska
Master's by Research at OXITED
Adolescent research
Our work aims to improve treatments for young people with anxiety. In a first step, we investigate in this study whether a safe, licensed blood pressure drug can improve learning in teenagers. Seeing such an effect would suggest that if combined with CBT, the medication may improve clinical response.
Young people research
This study aims to start exploring whether a protein naturally occurring in the body may be able to predict how likely a person is to develop anxiety in the future. Such information would help the more efficient planning of strategies that may prevent the development of an anxiety disorder in young people.