Cross-cutting theme lead: Kia Nobre

At Oxford we have a thriving community of world-leading cognitive neuroscientists who are making tremendous headway in characterising our complex psychological functions. They are providing increasingly sensitive psychological and neural measures that can inform treatment development. This theme will work across Adult Mental Health, Older Adults and Dementia, and Precision Psychological Treatments, ensuring that the cutting-edge advances in neuroscience can be harnessed for the benefits of patient cognitive and mental health.

The Oxford Health BRC will benefit from a dynamic network of neuroscience research, allowing clinicians to understand the causes of disorders, to access improved diagnostic tools, and develop effective bespoke therapies.

The availability of sensitive measures of cognitive and brain health is essential to identify the individuals who will most benefit from particular forms of treatment and to evaluate the outcomes of clinical trials.

Aims:

• Improve patient care, improve quality of life, and reduce healthcare costs.
• Establish a comprehensive ‘Brain Health Assessment’ in partnership with patients and clinicians.
• Create a pipeline for turning neuro-imaging measures and results into clinically useful tools.

How will we achieve this?

• Develop novel cognitive and imaging biomarkers to enable earlier and more accurate diagnosis, which will inform treatment decisions.
• Enable monitoring of disease progression and treatment response for diseases and disorders of mental health.
• Translate sensitive psychological and neural measures to inform treatment development through an experimental-medicine approach.
• Provide clear markers to assess the efficacy of clinical trials involving new pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions.
• Introduce standardized and state-of-the art assessments for research participants and volunteers to undergo.
• Invite research participants to join a community of ‘trial ready’ individuals.