Identifying the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms that underlie schizophrenia-related decision making

Early life experiences profoundly influence adult health and wellbeing. Maternal infection and adolescent social adversity are implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia, which has an estimated cost to English society of £60,000 per patient. Because prevention of adversity is unrealistic, and existing treatments offer little benefit against cognitive dysfunction, greater insight into pathophysiological mechanisms is essential to enable improved clinical interventions. Abnormal decision making is a core characteristic of schizophrenia, and has been attributed to dysfunction of multiple neural circuits involving prefrontal cortex, amygdala and striatum. It is unclear how complex environmental stressors induce these alterations, although emerging evidence suggests the involvement of cytokines.

This project will use rodent behavioural analysis, c-fos immunohistochemistry and optogenetic approaches to investigate the pathways responsible for impaired decision making in a rat neurodevelopmental model for schizophrenia, and employ lentiviral shRNA and localised intracerebral drug injection to investigate causal roles of cytokines and the potential for cytokine-induced signalling as a novel target to overcome these neurodevelopmental disturbances.

The University of Nottingham is one of the world’s most respected research-intensive universities, ranked 8th in the UK for research power (REF 2014). Students studying in the School of Life Sciences will have the opportunity to thrive in a vibrant, multidisciplinary environment, with expert supervision from leaders in their field, state-of-the-art facilities and strong links with industry. Students are closely monitored in terms of their personal and professional progression throughout their study period and are assigned academic mentors in addition to their supervisory team. The School provides structured training as a fundamental part of postgraduate personal development and our training programme enables students to develop skills across the four domains of the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF). During their studies, students will also have the opportunity to attend and present at conferences around the world. The School puts strong emphasis on the promotion of postgraduate research with a 2-day annual PhD research symposium attended by all students, plus academic staff and invited speakers.