Current Research
I am the director of the Psychopharmacology and Emotional Research Lab (PERL) based at the University Department of Psychiatry in Oxford. We are a multi-disciplinary team including cognitive neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychopharmacologists and psychologists.
We focus on the psychological mechanisms of antidepressant drug action with conventional and novel candidate treatments, challenging the typical division between these different approaches. To do this, we apply an experimental medicine approach, focused on neurocognitive measures of emotional processing in both healthy volunteers and patient samples.
This research helps to integrate psychological and pharmacological views of depression and treatment and has challenged the way in which we typically consider drug treatment for depression to work (see Harmer et al 2017). In addition this research has led to the development of human experimental models to explore the effects of novel drugs for the treatment of depression and anxiety. This work has also been applied in the clinic to provide an earlier marker of SSRI non-response in primary care (Browning et al., 2021).
External Positions
Executive Committee Officer, European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP)
Council, British Neuroscience Association (BNA)
NIHR panel Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation panel member
Wellcome Trust Expert Review Panellist (2016-2019)
Associate Editor for Psychological Medicine
Editorial board membership Biological Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Catherine Harmer
DPhil, MA, DipLATHE
Associate Head of Department (People and Culture), Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College
External Links
Read our Mental Elf blog on SSRIs and Psychotherapy for adolescent depression
https://www.nationalelfservice.net/treatment/
antidepressants/antidepressants-and-
psychotherapy-for-adolescent-depression-
can-they-be-compared-activeingredientsmh/
Watch our short video on SSRI treatment in young people, as part of the Wellcome Trust Commission on active ingredients
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4q1R53CWI
Hear me chat about serotonin on 'Stronger Stuff'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/
Follow us on twitter @OxfordPERL
Experimental Medicine Hub
We have launched our NIHR BRC experimental medicine hub linking academia and industry to facilitate the use of experimental medicine approaches for treatment development - Experimental Medicine Industry Partnership (EMIP). See our AIM day blogs for our launch event
https://oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/a-collection-of-blogs-from-the-oxford-health-brc-aimday/
Recent publications
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Multispecies probiotic administration reduces emotional salience and improves mood in subjects with moderate depression: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.
Journal article
Baião R. et al, (2022), Psychol Med, 1 - 11
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Emotional cognition in depression: Is it relevant for Clinical practice?
Journal article
Harmer CJ. and Browning M., (2021), Eur Neuropsychopharmacol, 56, 1 - 3
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PAX-D: study protocol for a randomised placebo-controlled trial evaluating the efficacy and mechanism of pramipexole as add-on treatment for people with treatment resistant depression.
Journal article
Au-Yeung SK. et al, (2021), Evid Based Ment Health
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No antidepressant-like acute effects of bright light on emotional information processing in healthy volunteers.
Journal article
Kaltenboeck A. et al, (2021), Psychopharmacology (Berl)
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Over-the-counter analgesics use is associated with pain and psychological distress among adolescents: a mixed effects approach in cross-sectional survey data from Norway.
Journal article
Jonassen R. et al, (2021), BMC Public Health, 21
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Breathlessness in COPD: linking symptom clusters with brain activity.
Journal article
Finnegan SL. et al, (2021), Eur Respir J, 58
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The effects of atorvastatin on emotional processing, reward learning, verbal memory, and inflammation in healthy volunteers: an experimental medicine study
Journal article
DE GIORGI R. et al, (2021), Journal of Psychopharmacology
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Accuracy in recognising happy facial expressions is associated with antidepressant response to a NOP receptor antagonist but not placebo treatment.
Journal article
Dawson GR. et al, (2021), J Psychopharmacol
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Déjà-vu? Neural and behavioural effects of the 5-HT4 receptor agonist, prucalopride, in a hippocampal-dependent memory task.
Journal article
de Cates AN. et al, (2021), Transl Psychiatry, 11