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Biography
In my clinical career I have been committed to care of patients with mental illnesses, including design of early intervention services. In my research I have investigated the psychological and neuronal mechanisms of mental disorders, including, mood disorders, ADHD schizophrenia and personality disorders. While at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, I led a project that mapped brain activity associated with the major clusters of mental symptoms, and contributed to the development of Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), which has become one of the most widely employed procedures for functional image analysis, worldwide. While at University of British Columbia and subsequently in Nottingham I have continued to employ psychological methods and brain imaging techniques to investigate the mechanism of symptoms in schizophrenia and mood disorders. My recent work has focussed on use of imaging in development of therapies for mental disorders.
Teaching Summary
I contribute to teaching the neuroscience of mental disorders to medical students and masters students. I supervise PhD candidates undertaking projects within the domain of neuroscience of mental… read more
Research Summary
My research addresses the neutral and psychological mechanism underlying mental disorders including psychotic disorders and mood disorders, using the techniques of clinical assessment, cognitive… read more
Current Research
My research addresses the neutral and psychological mechanism underlying mental disorders including psychotic disorders and mood disorders, using the techniques of clinical assessment, cognitive psychology and neuroimaging. In particular, I focus on the mechanisms that lead to persisting symptoms and disability. The goals of this research include enhancing understanding of the nature of mental disorders; identifying markers that predict risk of persisting symptoms and disability; and contributing to the development of more effective treatments.
Current projects include contributing to the development of Recogneyes-bio, which integrates gaze control training with promoting parasympathetic autonomic nervous system activity, to enhance cognition and long term outcome in psychotic disorders, and image-guided Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for treatment-resistant depression.
Past Research
In the 1980's I contributed to re-evaluation of the positive-negative symptom dichotomy in schizophrenia. I identified three syndromes characteristic of persistent psychotic illness: reality distortion, disorganization and psychomotor poverty, each associated with specific patterns of cognitive and neural activity.
While working at the MRC Cyclotron Unit at Hammersmith Hospital in the late 1980's and early 1990's, I contributed to the development of voxel-based analysis of human brain images, as a member of the team that developed Statistical Parametric Mapping, and also to the development of the concept of functional connectivity.