Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience
Parade of
stars Celebrating staff and student research
13.30 – 16.00 Wednesday 20 April 2016
Programme
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Welcome to Parade of Stars 2016, our showcase of exciting and innovative research, celebrating academic success across the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN). This year we have revitalised the format to include five minute talks from researchers at all levels, from student to professor, and also the professional services that support our work. In addition, we will be celebrating the achievements of six postdoctoral researchers who have received Independent Researcher Awards. This will be an occasion for networking and to inspire collaboration. You will have the opportunity not only to listen to colleagues’ work but also to speak with presenters during the coffee break and the wine reception after the event, as well as with colleagues across the IoPPN. The Parade of Stars is a celebration of the excellence, inclusivity and cooperation that makes the IoPPN such a wonderful institution for working and studying. We hope you will all enjoy the afternoon.
Professor Shitij Kapur Executive Dean and Head of Faculty
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Professor Carmine Pariante and Professor Thalia Eley Chairs of the Research & Innovation Committee
Parade of Stars 2016 Speakers
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Presentation of the Independent Researcher Awards 2015-2016 October 2015 Independent Researcher Award Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience Dr Nisha Singh Dr Katherine Sellers Independent Researcher Award NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and Dementia Unit Dr Jessica Agnew-Blais
April 2016 Independent Researcher Award Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience Dr Charlotte Gayer-Anderson Dr Olivier Brock Independent Researcher Award NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and Dementia Unit Dr Tom Barry
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Event programme Event
Where
Time
Who
Opening welcome
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
13.30
Pro
Presentation of Independent Researcher Awards
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
13.40
Pro
Talks
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
13.45
Mrs Mr D
13.50
Ms K
13.55
Dr S
14.00
Dr M
14.05
Dr M
14.10
Dr R
14.15
Pro
14.20
Dr J
14.25
Pro
14.30
Dr S
14.35
Mr P
Coffee break
Mezzanine
14.40
Talks
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
14.55
Dr Y
15.00
Mr N
15.05
Dr K
15.10
Dr A
15.15
Pro
15.20
Dr R
15.25
Dr T
15.30
Ms G
15.35
Dr N
15.40
Dr R
15.45
Pro
Closing speech and thanks
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
15.50
Pro
Wine reception
Education Hub
16.00
Ope
Event ends
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17.00
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Who Professors Shitij Kapur, Thalia Eley and Carmine Pariante Professor Shitij Kapur Mrs Helen Cargill and Mr David Crossinggum
Library Services support for the research community at King’s
Ms Kate Merritt
The nature of glutamate dysfunction in psychosis
Dr Stephani Hatch
Urban mental health: the South East London Community Health (SELCoH) study
Dr Michael Craig
Altering connections on the road to antisocial behaviour
Dr Melanie Abas
Psychological therapy to reduce depression and improve HIV outcomes in low-resource settings
Dr Rashmi Patel
Text mining electronic health records to investigate clinical outcomes in psychotic disorders
Professor Annalisa Pastore
How structural biology can contribute to the study of neurodegeneration
Dr Juliana Onwumere
Connecting a global community of carers of people with psychosis
Professor Philip Asherson
Three things you may not know about adult ADHD
Dr Siân Oram
Understanding the mental health needs of survivors of human trafficking
Mr Peter Hawkins
Antipsychotics and structural brain changes: is a single dose enough?
Dr Ying Chen
IoPPN research support
Mr Nicholas Magill
Addressing treatment contamination in the design and analysis of trials of complex interventions
Dr Kimberley Goldsmith
Treat me better: how mediation analysis can be used to evaluate and refine treatments
Dr Anna Cattaneo
Gene X Stress interaction: identification of novel candidate vulnerability genes by cross-species and cross tissues ‘omics’ analyses
Professor Dag Aarsland
Dementia with Lewy bodies: a common but under-researched and under-diagnosed form of dementia
Dr Robert Hindges
Wiring up the brain
Dr Tobias Wood
Subjects wanted dead or alive: ex-vivo and in-vivo pre-clinical MRI
Ms Giorgia Michelini
ADHD from childhood to adulthood: cognitive and neural markers
Dr Nicola Metrebian
Using financial incentives to increase patient benefit in UK drug treatment settings
Dr Ruben Deogracias
Orchestrating the assembly of neural circuitries in the cerebral cortex
Professor Peter McNaughton
How do we know when it's warm or when it's cold?
Professor Shitij Kapur Open to all
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Mrs Helen Cargill Mr David Crossinggum Head of Research Support, Library Liaison Manager, Library Services Library Services
Library Services support for the research community at King’s Synopsis
Biography
Library Services is a key professional services department within the Directorate of Students & Education Support, supporting the university’s teaching, learning, research and administrative activity. Hear more about the library support for the King’s College London academic and research community, which includes a range of faculty liaison, training in research tools and resources, a large collection of online journals and other literature, support with open access publishing, using the repository, and managing research data.
Helen oversees and contributes to the strategic direction of services and systems supporting scholarly publication and research data management. She is a qualified librarian who heads a team of nine library staff focusing on the provision of support to King’s researchers. The Research Support team provide support for King’s institutional repository Pure, open access publishing, the management, preservation, and discoverability of research data, bibliometric analysis, and copyright, through a programme of guidance, training and advocacy at individual, departmental and institutional levels. David started at King’s in 2001, with a focus on customer service, staffing and managing libraries. His new role, and that of the Partnership & Liaison team, is to work closely with faculties to ensure they are understood and their needs are met.
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Ms Kate Merritt PhD Student, Department of Psychosis Studies
The nature of glutamate dysfunction in psychosis
Synopsis
Biography
Alterations in glutamatergic neurotransmission may be fundamental to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Glutamate concentrations in the brain can be measured in vivo using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS). Although around sixty 1H-MRS studies in schizophrenia have been published, the findings have been inconsistent, and the extent to which these vary with the brain region examined and the stage of the disorder is unclear. A recent meta-analysis by Kate and her colleagues has shown that schizophrenia is associated with elevated glutamatergic metabolite levels in a number of brain regions, and that these vary with illness stage. These findings indicate that compounds that reduce glutamate metabolites may have therapeutic potential.
Kate has recently submitted her PhD thesis in Psychosis Studies under the supervision of Philip McGuire, Alice Egerton and Matthew Taylor. Her PhD examined the role of glutamate dysfunction in first episode psychosis and its relationship with treatment response. In 2015, Kate was a finalist in the King’s Three Minute Thesis competition. Prior to her PhD, Kate obtained a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience and an MRes in Integrative Mammalian Biology from The University of Manchester, and an MSc in Psychiatric Research from King’s.
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Dr Stephani Hatch Senior Lecturer in Social Epidemiology, Department of Psychological Medicine
Urban mental health: the South East London Community Health (SELCoH) study
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Synopsis
Biography
Discrimination is a key social determinant of poor health with stronger effects on mental than physical health. However, little information from UK populations is available and few UK studies represent multicultural, urban contexts. Migrants make up 40% of the London population and for many migration includes a shift from ethnic majority to minority group status. With immigration policies being contentious political and social issues, migrant groups face increased exposure to discrimination. Findings from the SELCoH study illustrate that discrimination across a wide range of domains (including health services) have negative consequences for mental health. The effects of discrimination on common mental disorders were most pronounced for individuals who had recently migrated to the UK, an ethnically heterogeneous group. Discrimination is a tractable, socially constructed barrier. New methodological advancements will help us better understand and reduce its effect on mental health, education and occupation outcomes.
Stephani is co-PI for the South East London Community Health (SELCoH) study and the Deputy Cluster Lead for the Engagement, Population and Informatics Cluster within the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. Her research focuses on urban mental health and social determinants of inequalities in mental health and service use. She is a co-chair of the King’s Diversity Community and IoPPN Race Equality Champion. She also leads the Health Inequalities Research Network (HERON), which is a network that promotes the use of participatory research approaches, public engagement and youth outreach.
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Dr Michael Craig Senior Lecturer, Department of Forensic & Neurodevelopmental Sciences
Altering connections on the road to antisocial behaviour Synopsis
Biography
Persistent antisocial behaviour, also known as Conduct Problems (CP), is the commonest childhood mental health condition and a very significant burden to the affected individual and society. The underlying cause(s) for CP is most likely complex but there is compelling evidence that children with CP have differences in brain anatomy and function. However, noone has determined whether these differences predict ‘risk’ and ‘resilience’ to the persistence of antisocial behaviour, or if they are ‘fixed’ or ‘reversible’. We are currently attempting to address these key questions using state of the art imaging techniques.
Dr Michael Craig is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Forensic & Neurodevelopmental Sciences. He is Clinical Lead of the National Autism Unit at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, and Programme Director for the MSc in Clinical Neurodevelopmental Sciences at King’s College London. His main research interests are the biological determinants of brain development and the effects of sex hormones on brain and behaviour. He is lead investigator on the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded study into Brain Associates of Parent Training on Antisocial Behaviour in Children and other EU and MRC funded studies.
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Dr Melanie Abas Reader in Global Mental Health & Deputy Director, Centre for Global Mental Health
Psychological therapy to reduce depression and improve HIV outcomes in low-resource settings
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Synopsis
Biography
Depression is common in people living with HIV and even mild depression predicts poor adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART), as in lack of viral suppression and progression to AIDS. There is theoretical and limited empirical evidence that certain psychological treatments improve adherence to antiretroviral therapy for depressed people living with HIV. If this were so, such treatments could improve survival in HIV and reduce infectivity to others. Melanie’s presentation will be on the work of her team in culturally adapting and evaluating cognitive behavioural treatments for depression and for adherence to ART in a low-resource context in Sub-Saharan Africa. To date research on depression treatment and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa has been neglected despite this region remaining the centre of the HIV epidemic with 1.4 million new infections in 2014.
Dr Melanie Abas is a reader in Global Mental Health and honorary consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her early research was the first to show a common mechanism for the development of depression cross-culturally through the experience of life events involving humiliation and loss. She has developed interdisciplinary methods for epidemiological research on depression in cross-cultural settings in Zimbabwe, Thailand, Moldova, Sri Lanka and minority groups in the UK. In the last five years her research has included the first randomised clinical trial of problem-solving therapy for depression which is now being scaled up in Africa. Melanie sat on the Executive Committee for the Medical Education Partnership Initiative funded through the US Presidents Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief. From this, she has built a platform of research at the depression-HIV interface in low-resource settings. Melanie is King’s lead for the African Mental Health Research Initiative, a major Wellcome Trust funded programme to build research capacity.
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Dr Rashmi Patel Academic Clinical Lecturer, Department of Psychosis Studies
Text mining electronic health records to investigate clinical outcomes in psychotic disorders Synopsis
Biography
Electronic health records (EHRs) are widely used in mental health services. Most clinical data in EHRs are stored as unstructured free text. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a text mining technique which can be used to automatically extract information from free text. In this talk, Rashmi will describe how he has used NLP to investigate the impact of negative symptoms and cannabis use on people with psychotic disorders.
Dr Rashmi Patel studied Medical Sciences at the University of Cambridge before completing his medical degree at the University of Oxford in 2008. He has recently undertaken a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Research Training Fellowship and is now an Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Psychosis Studies at the IoPPN. He has a particular interest in the neurobiology of psychotic disorders and the role of natural language processing techniques to analyse electronic health records in order to develop more effective treatment strategies. In addition to research, he is an honorary psychiatrist in the Psychosis Clinical Academic Group of King’s Health Partners (KHP), a pioneering Academic Health Science Centre which combines world-class clinical research and mental healthcare for people with psychotic disorders.
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Professor Annalisa Pastore Professor of the Molecular Bases of Neuromuscular Diseases, Department of Basic & Clinical Neuroscience
How structural biology can contribute to the study of neurodegeneration
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Synopsis
Biography
Annalisa’s group is interested in studying the structure and function of proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases to understand the events which lead to pathology and design suitable therapeutic strategies. Her talk will investigate mitochondrial pathologies linked to misfunctioning of iron metabolism, such as Friedreich’s ataxia, and the use of different complementary biophysical, biochemical and bioinformatics techniques. It will highlight structural, functional, evolutionary and thermodynamics contributions to understanding the cellular role of frataxin in iron-sulphur cluster biogenesis as a regulator of the reaction speeds and the interaction between frataxin and the IscS/IscU complex.
Professor Pastore has been a structural biologist for over 25 years and has long-standing expertise in protein structure determination. Having worked as a postdoc in the groups of the Nobel Laureate Richard Ernst at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and of Professor Iain Campbell at the Biochemistry Department, University of Oxford, she moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, where she established the first Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) laboratory. She worked on the structural/functional characterisation of the regulatory muscle proteins titin and nebulin promoting the first structural studies on these proteins. In her current role at the Wohl Institute she focuses on the characterisation of proteins involved in muscle contraction and in neurodegeneration. In 2000 Annalisa was elected an European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) member and in 2013 member of the Academia Europaea. She has been a recipient of several prizes and other recognitions, and is the author of 215 peer reviewed scientific research publications.
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Dr Juliana Onwumere Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology
Connecting a global community of carers of people with psychosis Synopsis
Biography
Carers of people with psychotic disorders have considerable unmet needs for information on how to understand the illness and emotional support to facilitate their adaptive coping efforts. Stress-related disorders and isolation can be very high in these groups. Digital interventions in healthcare continue to rapidly expand but their application to addressing real life issues for carers of people with psychosis have been largely overlooked. This talk focuses on a recent innovation that sought to deliver a free online course, specifically designed for carers of people with psychosis, which offered opportunities for different groups of carers across the globe to learn together and access support.
Dr Juliana Onwumere is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the IoPPN and an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist with the National Psychosis Unit, and the Psychological Interventions Clinic for Outpatients with Psychosis, in South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her main research and clinical work is focused on severe mental illness, particularly issues relating to understanding their impact on families and developing interventions to improve their functioning and wellbeing. Her recent research developments include investigating groupbased Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) interventions designed specifically for carers of people with Hoarding Disorder.
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Professor Philip Asherson Professor in Molecular Psychiatry, MRC Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre
Three things you may not know about adult ADHD
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Synopsis
Biography
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder effecting 5-6% of children and 3-4% of adults. The disorder, particularly in adults, remains controversial and poorly understood. However, this does not reflect what we know about ADHD – which turns out to be one of the most reliably defined contemporary mental health constructs with a set of highly reproducible genetic, neurobiological and treatment response findings. There is a striking discrepancy between what is known and what is generally understood about ADHD in adults. Here Philip will comment on why he became interested in ADHD in adults and discuss three things you may not know about adult ADHD: that ADHD is not in fact a disorder of inattention; that ADHD might be best explained as a disorder of excessive mind wandering linked to early processing (sensory) deficits; that emotional dysregulation may be more important to clinical outcomes in ADHD than the core symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity used to define the condition.
Philip Asherson completed his PhD on molecular genetic studies of schizophrenia in Cardiff, and joined the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre in 1996 to develop the International Multicenter ADHD Genetics (IMAGE) project. He was among the first senior consultants in the UK to specialise in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in adults, joining the first adult ADHD clinic established in 1994. His recent work identified a key role of mood lability in adult ADHD and the processes that lead to co-occurring psychiatric disorders such as borderline personality disorder. He currently leads a project investigating the effects of methylphenidate on ADHD, aggression and behaviour in young adult offenders, and recently completed the first randomised trial of cannabinoids in ADHD. Philip is also researching the neural basis of mind wandering in ADHD and the effects of stimulant medication and mindfulness based interventions on ADHD. He is a member of the NICE guideline development group for ADHD and is president of the UK Adult ADHD Network.
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Dr Siân Oram Lecturer in Women’s Mental Health, Department of Health Services & Population Research
Understanding the mental health needs of survivors of human trafficking Synopsis
Biography
Human trafficking is the recruitment and movement of people, often by means such as force, deception, or abuse of vulnerability, for the purposes of exploitation. Trafficked people’s experiences of abuse and of poor living and working conditions have been widely reported, but there has been little research to explore the health needs of survivors. This talk presents findings from studies contacted as part of the PROTECT (Provider Responses Treatment and Care for Trafficked People) research programme to investigate the mental health needs of survivors of human trafficking, including a study that used clinical informatics to provide the first evidence of the needs of survivors with severe mental illness.
Dr Siân Oram is a Lecturer in Women’s Mental Health in the Section of Women’s Mental Health. She studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge before completing her Masters’ degree and PhD at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She moved to the IoPPN in 2011. Siân is a mixed methods researcher interested in the health outcomes associated with violence (particularly human trafficking and domestic violence) and associated health service and policy responses. Siân managed the recently completed PROTECT (Provider Responses Treatment and Care for Trafficked People) programme, which aimed to inform the NHS response to human trafficking and was funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme. She has published widely on the topics of human trafficking and health and regularly participates in national and international working and advisory groups on this issue.
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Mr Peter Hawkins PhD Student, Department of Neuroimaging
Antipsychotics and structural brain changes: is a single dose enough?
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Synopsis
Biography
Antipsychotics have been frequently implicated in the structural brain changes associated with schizophrenia, with both drug subtype and dose level shown to be important factors. Recently, MRI studies have shown changes in measurements of brain volume following just a single dose of these drugs, although it is not clear if these changes represent real volume changes or are artefacts due to transient physiological effects produced by the drug, such as increased cerebral blood flow. Part of Peter’s PhD examines the effects of a single dose of antipsychotics on the structure and blood flow of the healthy human brain, as part of an effort to bring quantification and increased precision to imaging metrics of acute antipsychotic effects.
Peter completed his BSc in Psychology at the University of York in 2004 and his MSc in Cognitive & Clinical Neuroscience at Goldsmiths in 2009. After spending two years working with acute psychosis patients for the NHS in North Camden, he moved to the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences at the IoPPN in 2012, and commenced his PhD under the supervision of Dr Mitul Mehta and Dr Anthony Vernon in 2014. His thesis is examining the functional and structural changes measured using MRI that occur in the healthy human brain following acute doses of different antipsychotics.
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Dr Ying Chen Research Development Manager, Research & Development Office
IoPPN research support
Synopsis
Biography
The Research & Development (R&D) Office supports both the IoPPN and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) by playing a key research management role. The presentation will give a snapshot of our activities in advising research funding opportunities, supporting individual academics to increase funding success, facilitating researcher development opportunities supported by the IoPPN Research & Innovation Committee, and providing support for navigating NHS research governance and approval processes for SLaM.
Ying obtained a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Southampton, sponsored by a prestigious British Council scholarship. Since then she has conducted neuroscience research in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry. She held the positions of senior drug discovery scientist at Eli Lilly UK and Lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Surrey before joining the IoPPN in December 2015.
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Mr Nicholas Magill PhD Student, Department of Biostatistics
Addressing treatment contamination in the design and analysis of trials of complex interventions
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Synopsis
Biography
In randomised psychotherapy trials patients allocated to the control treatment might receive components of the new therapy. Such contamination can sometimes be avoided by cluster randomisation in trials but means recruiting more patients than under individual randomisation. Simulation studies, informed by data from existing mental health trials, will be carried out to develop a decision tool to compare the efficiency of cluster versus individual randomisation. The secondary aim is to refine statistical techniques used in the analysis of trials to account for contamination. These would lead to the design of more efficient trials and improved estimates of the effects of treatment.
Nicholas gained a BSc in Psychology with Neuroscience from the University of Leicester in 2011, followed by an MSc in Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2012. He started work as a trial statistician within the King’s Clinical Trials Unit, which led him to become interested in contamination in trials and to apply for a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Doctoral Research Fellowship, under the supervision of Professor Sabine Landau, Professor Khalida Ismail, and Professor Paul McCrone. His research interests are a combination of mental health illness and treatment, clinical trials, and causal estimation. Well-designed randomised controlled trials together with modern causal estimation methods enable hypotheses regarding treatment mechanism to be tested and, consequently, knowledge regarding the treatment of mental health illness to improve.
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Dr Kimberley Goldsmith Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics, Department of Biostatistics
Treat me better: how mediation analysis can be used to evaluate and refine treatments Synopsis
Biography
Complex psychological and rehabilitative treatments are an important tool in the treatment arsenal, and have often been shown to be beneficial to patients. Clinicians develop these types of treatments based on theoretical models of disease and pathways to recovery. Such theoretical models of treatment mechanisms can be evaluated using mediation analysis. These methods allow us to assess whether treatments are working in the way that we expect, and if not, to gain insight into why this might be the case. This information can lead to the refinement and improvement of treatments, impacting on patient outcomes and quality of life.
Kimberley trained as a basic scientist at McMaster University in Canada and later obtained a Master of Public Health in Biostatistics & Epidemiology from Oregon Health & Science University. She completed her studies with a PhD in Biostatistics from King’s College London, using longitudinal models to study mediation in the PACE trial of rehabilitative treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Such models have rarely been applied in practice. The PACE trial was conducted in part at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust in the CFS service run by Trudie Chalder. The mediation findings have been fed back to the therapists working in the service to facilitate refinement of the treatments. Kimberley’s main research interests are clinical trials of complex therapies in psychiatry and psychology and mediation of the effects of such treatments. She has worked in a diverse range of disease areas, including employment policy for people with disabilities, antimicrobial resistance, heart and lung transplantation and other aspects of cardiothoracic disease. Parade of Stars 2016
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Dr Annamaria Cattaneo Postdoctoral Research Worker, Department of Psychological Medicine
Gene X Stress interaction: identification of novel candidate vulnerability genes by cross-species and cross tissues ‘omics’ analyses
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Synopsis
Biography
Epigenetic mechanisms may explain the interaction between the genome and the environment, leading to increased reactivity to stress and enhanced vulnerability to developing psychiatric disorders. Here Anna proposes a novel approach to identify vulnerability genes to be tested for GeneXEnvironment interactions, based on the use of ‘omics’ approaches in different species (rodents and humans) and in different tissues (brain and blood). This allows the identification of novel genes that are modulated by stress, both in the brain and in the blood, and thus may be used as peripheral biomarkers. Moreover, genes that mediate the effect of stress on vulnerability to mental disorders could also be used as novel potential targets for drugs.
Anna studied Biology at the University of Milan, Italy, and in 2009, obtained her PhD degree in Molecular Genetics applied to Biomedical Sciences at the University of Brescia, Italy. She moved to London to work as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Stress, Psychiatry & Immunology coordinated by Professor Pariante. Anna has received international research awards, such as the 2014 Rafaelsen Young Investigators Award and the 2015 European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Young Investigator Award. She is best known for her work on the identification of stress- and inflammation-related peripheral biomarkers that predict treatment response in depressed patients. Her recent work is focused on the interaction between stress and the genome, and on how this can mediate vulnerability to developing depression or other stress-related psychiatric disorders in adulthood.
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Professor Dag Aarsland Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Department of Old Age Psychiatry
Dementia with Lewy bodies: a common but under-researched and under-diagnosed form of dementia Synopsis
Biography
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a common and severe neurodegenerative disease. With features resembling a mixture of what is seen in Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, it is the quintessential neuropsychiatric disorder, with motor, cognitive, psychotic, autonomous, and sleep disturbances. Accordingly, these patients can present to a wide variety of specialist clinics and are often not diagnosed and thus under-treated. The presentation will review the diagnostic and management challenges as well as highlight the many unmet scientific needs.
Dag Aarsland is Head of the Department of Old Age Psychiatry at the IoPPN, Visiting Professor at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and Research Director at Centre for Age-Related Medicine, Stavanger University Hospital, Norway. He is a psychiatrist and has worked as a senior consultant in geriatric psychiatry for most of his career. His main research interest is the neurospychiatric aspects of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, in particular translational studies on cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
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Dr Robert Hindges Reader in Developmental Neurobiology, Centre for Developmental Neurobiology
Wiring up the brain
Synopsis One of the fundamental questions in neuroscience is how the brain gets wired up to fulfil its normal functions and how connections are maintained throughout life. We have used the vertebrate visual system to identify molecules and mechanisms establishing neural circuits that are important for distinct tasks. Our studies implicate a synaptic gene family, in which mutations have been linked to several disorders, including mental retardation, epilepsy and bipolar disorder.
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Biography Dr Robert Hindges is a Reader in Developmental Neurobiology. He graduated from the University of Zürich, Switzerland, where he also obtained his Doctoral Degree in Molecular Biology. He subsequently joined the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, USA, before moving to King’s College London. He has made fundamental contributions to the field of vertebrate visual system development, in particular towards uncovering the formation of binocular vision and visual maps in the brain. Some of his work is now described in basic neuroscience textbooks. In addition to his position as a principal investigator, Robert Hindges is the Academic Director of the recently established Genome Editing and Embryology Core Facility at King’s, which offers state of the art technologies to the research community.
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Dr Tobias Wood Postdoctoral Research Worker, Department of Neuroimaging
Subjects wanted dead or alive: ex-vivo and in-vivo pre-clinical MRI Synopsis
Biography
Tobias’s research group has developed new ex-vivo methods for pre-clinical quantitative imaging at close to 1,000 times the resolution available in a clinical scanning session. By combining these exquisite scans with histopathology we can gain real insight into the link between changes at the cellular level and image contrast. This will lead to better interpretation and diagnostic potential of in-vivo imaging. These methods have recently been applied to image demyelination in a mouse model and also Multiple Sclerosis lesions in the human spinal cord, and are currently being used for imaging a rodent model of neuro-inflammation.
Tobias studied Physics & Engineering at Cambridge University, and after graduating worked in the space industry for a year designing telecommunications satellites. He then completed a PhD at Imperial College, where he built a laser fluorescence imaging system that could be used to help surgeons distinguish the border between tumours and healthy tissue. After realising that the brain was much more interesting to look at, Tobias joined the Department of Neuroimaging in 2011, where he thoroughly enjoys pushing the limits of what a Magnetic Resonance (MR) scanner can achieve.
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Ms Giorgia Michelini PhD Student, MRC Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre
ADHD from childhood to adulthood: cognitive and neural markers
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Synopsis
Biography
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders worldwide, which persists into adulthood in a significant proportion of cases. An improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying the persistence and remission of ADHD could pave the way towards the development of new interventions aimed at promoting remission and reducing severe long-term outcomes. In this talk, Giorgia will present the results of a recent study investigating cognitive and neurophysiological markers of ADHD remission and persistence in a large sample of adolescents and adults who received a diagnosis of ADHD in childhood.
Giorgia received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Psychology from San Raffaele University of Milan, Italy. She then joined the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, where she is currently a PhD student supervised by Professor Jonna Kuntsi and Drs Grainne McLoughlin and Fruhling Rijsdijk. Over the last few years, she has worked on several research projects investigating cognitive and neurophysiological impairments in ADHD and related psychiatric conditions, combining cognitive neuroscience and behavioural genetic approaches. Her PhD research focuses on the developmental pathways to ADHD from childhood to adulthood, as well as neural and cognitive markers of ADHD and bipolar disorder in adult women.
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Dr Nicola Metrebian Senior Research Fellow, Department of Addiction Sciences
Using financial incentives to increase patient benefit in UK drug treatment settings Synopsis
Biography
Despite the effectiveness of opiate substitution treatment (OST) for heroin dependence, OST suffers from high attrition due to relapse into illicit drug use. Contingency management (providing positive reinforcement through financial incentives and verbal praise) has great potential to improve patient benefit in OST. Nicola, together with Professor John Strang and their research team, has undertaken a large cluster randomised controlled trial to test the effectiveness of using financial incentives to encourage attendance at treatment services and abstinence from street heroin among individuals receiving OST.
Nicola joined King’s in 2005 having previously worked at Imperial College. She has a background in Psychology and a PhD from Imperial. Her research interests include pharmacological and psychological interventions for individuals with opiate dependence. Her first study at King’s was evaluating supervised injectable opiate treatment for hard to treat heroin users. She is currently assessing the effectiveness of contingency management in UK drug treatment settings through two large cluster randomised controlled trials as part of a National Insitute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grant. In 2015 she received an European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Scientific Paper award for her paper published in the Lancet reporting on the benefits of using small financial incentives to encourage the completion of hepatitis B vaccination among individuals receiving opiate treatment.
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Dr Ruben Deogracias Senior Research Associate, Centre for Developmental Neurobiology
Orchestrating the assembly of neural circuitries in the cerebral cortex
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Synopsis
Biography
Neuronal circuitries underlying the function of the mammalian cerebral cortex collectively constitute one of the most complex biological systems that requires the correct synaptic assembly during development of interneurons and pyramidal cells. Our goal is to identify molecules orchestrating the formation of gamma-aminobutyric acid-ergic (GABAergic) synapses onto pyramidal cells. To this end, we are following a candidate approach strategy based on an unbiased genomic screening comparing unique populations of GABAergic interneurons that make synapses into different subcellular compartments of pyramidal cells. Unravelling the molecular mechanisms that control the precise spatial organisation of synapse formation during development should have a broad impact, from understanding plasticity in the healthy brain to identifying wiring abnormalities in disease.
Ruben carried out his undergraduate studies in Madrid, Spain, where he completed his degree in Molecular Biology in 2000 and Biochemistry in 2002. He finished his PhD in 2007, which focused on characterising the regulation of the receptor for neurotrophins Tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB) under pathological conditions. As a postdoc in the group of Professor Barde at the Biozentrum of Basel, Switzerland, he found that Rett syndrome symptoms can be improved by modulating the levels of the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the brain. These studies led to the first clinical trial for the treatment of Rett Syndrome. Currently in the group of Professor Beatriz Rico at the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, he is studying the molecular mechanisms governing synapse formation during neuronal development.
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Professor Peter McNaughton Professor of Pharmacology, Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases
How do we know when it’s warm or when it’s cold?
Synopsis
Biography
We need to be able to make quick judgements about warmth and cold in the external environment, in order to choose a comfortable ambient temperature and to avoid dangerous extremes of heat. When the transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channel family was cloned it seemed that this problem was solved, because a spectrum of thermally activated TRP channels responded to temperatures from extreme cold to painful heat. However, as knockout mice for each of these thermo-TRP channels have been constructed, it has become apparent that many of the supposed thermal detectors actually have little influence on thermal behaviour at the level of the whole organism. With this background we set out to establish the molecular mechanism responsible for warmth sensation. This work identifies TRPM2 as a novel thermal detector which is probably responsible for the detection of non-painful warmth.
Peter McNaughton was born in New Zealand, where he studied Physics at the University of Auckland. He was lecturer in Physiology at the University of Cambridge from 1978 to 1991, and moved to London in 1991 as Head of Physiology at King’s College London. In 1999 he moved to Cambridge as Head of the Department of Pharmacology and in 2013 returned to King’s College London as Professor of Pharmacology. He has worked in several areas of neuroscience, mainly in the cellular basis of sensations – vision, pain and magnetic sensation. The principal interest of his lab at present is in the molecular and cellular basis of pain at the level of painsensitive receptors. He has initiated two major drug development projects, both arising from discoveries in his lab.
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DESIGN: Day 1, www.day1.org.uk Approved by brand@kcl.ac.uk, April 2016
WWW.KCL.AC.UK/ IOPPN
IOPPN@KCL.AC.UK
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience King’s College London 16 De Crespigny Park London SE5 8AF
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