Luca Villa

I’m a postdoc in the Pharmacology and Emotion Research Laboratory, led by Professor Catherine Harmer. My work focuses on the effects a novel drug that aims to improve cognitive impairment in remitted depression.

I completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge, where I investigated aspects of brain structure and function that underlie adolescent depression, and also studied the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy on resting-state functional connectivity. With colleagues at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, I also conducted in utero and infant brain imaging, investigating aspects of brain structure and function associated with an increased likelihood for developing autism.

I then went on to do a postdoc at Yale University, where I studied the neurobiological characteristics of bipolar disorder in older adults, as well as neural markers for past suicide attempts across psychiatric illnesses.