Theme: Mechanisms

Project Description

How does dysfunction in the brain give rise to the complex clinical syndrome we recognise as psychosis? Psychosis is a severe mental illness associated with psychiatric symptoms, but also with striking neurological, cognitive and brain-based alterations. Yet why individuals differ so markedly in their symptoms, response to treatment and overall illness course remains poorly understood. Objectively measurable changes in neurological, motor and cognitive function may provide a critical missing link between altered brain circuits and the clinical expression of psychosis.

This PhD/DPhil will investigate these neurobehavioural phenotypes in first-episode psychosis (FEP), bringing together clinical neuroscience, cognitive assessment and multimodal neuroimaging to address three questions:

• What neurobehavioural abnormalities occur in FEP? Neurological soft signs, quantitative motor measures and cognition will be used to characterise dimensions of dysfunction and their relationship with clinical presentation.
• What brain circuits underlie them? Functional and diffusion MRI will investigate sensorimotor, frontostriatal, cerebellar–thalamo–cortical and association networks, supported by healthy-comparison data.
• How do they evolve? Longitudinal assessment will identify stable and changing features and examine their relationships with symptoms, functioning and treatment response.

The project will be embedded within Oxford’s Wellcome-funded Baseline Biomarker Check (BBC) clinic, an established prospective clinical-research platform in FEP. Recruitment and follow-up are already underway, with data from over 150 FEP and healthy-comparison participants anticipated over the course of the project.

The student will work at the heart of this clinical-research platform, gaining hands-on experience in neurological and clinical phenotyping, cognition, multimodal neuroimaging, longitudinal analysis and scientific dissemination.

This is an opportunity to undertake interdisciplinary research at the interface of psychiatry, neurology and neuroscience, addressing a fundamental question in clinical neuroscience: how does altered brain function translate into behaviour, symptoms and illness course?