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Mental Health Neuroscience Lab
We are a research team led by Dr Camilla Nord and based at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. Our lab's goal is to discover how cognitive neuroscience can be translated into better treatment of mental health conditions. We have a particular focus on brain-body interactions, such as how the gut, immune system, and metabolic system interact with the brain to create our sense of mental and physical health.
Our work broadly falls into three streams:
1. Discovery Science - Blue-sky research that helps us discover common 'transdiagnostic' mechanisms driving poor mental health - see our study in The American Journal of Psychiatry showing one common factor: disturbances in interoception, the sense of the internal condition of the body
2. Experimental Medicine - Studies disrupting putative sources of worse mental health, or enhancing factors that support mental health using pharmacology, brain stimulation, and psychological interventions, to explore their causal relationship with mental health symptoms - see our study in Current Biology that found a role for gut state in disgust avoidance, and our study in Psychological Medicine exploring the computational mechanisms of psychological therapy
3. Translational Neuroscience - Clinical trials to test neuroscience-based interventions, see our clinical trial combing brain stimulation and psychological therapy in Neuropsychopharmacology
Lab News
PhD student Alicia Smith wins the Alwyn Lishman Prize at the British Neuropsychiatry Association
Camilla’s award-winning research, a transdiagnostic approach to neurostimulation in psychiatry, provides the first report of improved goal-directed control as a result of brain stimulation.
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