, Director of said: “Mental Health Awareness Week is a timely reminder th吃瓜网 Neuroscience is about brain research for better lives, making brain biology matter to society and working together to improve mental health diagnosis and treatment for all.
“These new projects cover every level, from the molecules of our genetic code, to sleep hygiene and drug addiction. Only teams of neuroscientists working on this scale are able to link these levels, helping every brain navigate modern life and stay mentally healthy and happy.”
, Senior Lecturer in the (PPN) has led Bristol’s contributions to the new Medical Research Council (MRC) . Bristol has partnered with Cardiff University, King's College London and the Universities of Lancaster, Leeds and Oxford to form the (Modalities for Understanding, Recording and Integrating Data Across Early life) cluster, which has been awarded £2.7 million to unravel mechanisms of early brain development using mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Sleep disruption is a common early life adversity, particularly for adolescents. Sleep helps nurture healthy brain development, so sleep disruption may be particularly damaging to the brains of young people, and often precedes the onset of disorders including anxiety and depression.
, Professor of Child Health in Bristol Medical School, will lead a team of epidemiologists, psychologists, sociologists and engineers on a pioneering project, called ‘Sleep Tracking and Treatment for Adolescent Mental health Problems (STTAMP)’.
The team will use smartphone apps to detect and treat insomnia before it takes root, setting young people back on track and avoiding long-term mental health problems. The £1 million programme will be funded predominantly by , with additional University of Bristol funding for a clinical PhD.
It is widely known that many mental health disorders are linked to genetic variation. Professor Matt Jones has teamed up with collaborators at Cardiff University and University College London (UCL), who have been awarded a £2 million MRC grant to study young people at high genetic risk of schizophrenia.
The research programme will combine computational analyses of brain activity in adolescents, in mouse genetic models and in patient-derived neurons to uncover the mechanisms linking genetic mutations to brain function, paving the way for more precise treatments in psychiatry.
Finally, , Senior Lecturer in PPN and Graeme Henderson, Professor of Pharmacology, along with colleagues and in Bristol’s and from the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at the University of Bath, have also been awarded a £1 million MRC grant to study the lethal interactions between benzodiazepines and opioids.
The multidisciplinary research will combine interviewing patients with experimental laboratory studies to help reduce the risk of overdose deaths in opioid users.