Just out today, the keto diet showed a (modest) benefit in treatment resistant depression, when compared to a pretty reasonable control! jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
RA jobs in Oxford working on a Wellcome Trust funded grant. Neuroimaging, neurostimulation, computational modelling-- what's not to like!
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
Postdoctoral research position in #ComputationalPsychiatry and #EEG as part of relmed.ac.uk trial testing reinforcement learning as biomarker for antidepressant treatment response. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @mikebrowning.bsky.social @relmed.bsky.social
These posts are live now! Oxford is a great place to work. Do apply if you'd like to apply neurostimulatory techniques to understand symptoms.
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
📣🔥Thrilled to announce that 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference will take place in New Haven, CT, btw July 14-16 -
www.cpconf.org
@robbrutledge.bsky.social @drrickadams.bsky.social @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social @docqhuys.bsky.social @clairegillan.bsky.social Sonia Bishop
More info to come soon!
Thanks Charlotte!
Repetitive negative thoughts will be investigated using a range of cutting-edge brain science techniques as part of a new study led by the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford and funded by Wellcome @wellcometrust.bsky.social 👇
tinyurl.com/364es88k
There are 3 Oxford-based post doc positions for this Wellcome Trust project that will be advertised soon!
If you have experinece in neurostimulation (tms/tus) and/or modelling of cogneuro data in humans do contact one of us (me, @mkflugge.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social, Jacinta OShea) to discuss!
Cost effectiveness of pramipexole for treatment resistant depression!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Interesting new study of pramipexole in anhedonic low mood in mdd, bipolar and dysthymia. Some cool mechanistic outcomes: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...
Really interesting, brief ideas paper. Clearly relevant to treatment research-- the mechanism by which you leave an illness state is unlikely to just be the opposite of the mechanism by which you entered it (can see how this might apply to e.g. SSRIs in depression).
Gulliver Waite took part in the PAX-D trial testing Pramipexole for treatment resistant depression @ox.ac.uk. He told @theguardian.com how being part of the study made a difference to his life.
👉 Gulliver's story
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
👉 The findings www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/parkins...
Really lovely story from one of our participants in the recent PAX-D study. If you are interested in the results of the study, you can find them here: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
‘I wish I took part sooner’: how a medical trial transformed a young person’s life
Hello, in case you are interested, the study is complete and the paper is published here: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Curious about how scientists measure brain activity through EEG? Swipe to read more! ⚡️
Depression can affect the mind, body and daily life in ways you might not expect.
🧠Swipe to learn the key signs and symptoms – and why recognising them matters.
#Depression #Mentalhealth #Research
New preprint alert with @mikebrowning.bsky.social
and Chamith Halahakoon!
People have been using computer-based reinforcement learning tasks with affect probes. But to what extent do they reflect real-life affective experience? We tested this with 3 weeks of EMA + RL tasks in 339 participants.
Pramipexole vs. quetiapine vs. amantadine in TRD. Interesting open label, short term RCT using a surprisingly low dose (I suspect that the reported dose of 37.5mg of pramipexole is a typo and it should be 0.375mg)
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
V important meta-analysis doi.org/10.1001/jama...: Discontinuation symptoms 1 week post stopping antidepressants was below the threshold for clinically significant discontinuation syndrome. Later worse mood is likely depression relapse @jfhayes.bsky.social @sameerjauhar.bsky.social.
🎊Recently, colleagues from across the @NIHRresearch Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) gathered for a celebration of progress and partnership in mental health research.
➡️ oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/nihr-mental-...
It is generally higher than you see with ssris. This paper reports the odds of dropping out due to intolerance for lots of antidepressants vs placebo (page 154 of appendix). By comparison, the or in our study was 4.4.
www.thelancet.com/article/S014...
Thanks Rick
GRATEFUL to @nihr.bsky.social for funding this work and @oxhealthbrc.bsky.social for support.
Pramipexole is clearly not a first line treatment for depression, but these results demonstrate that it can be a useful option for our most treatment-resistant patients! 6/6
TRANSPARENCY: There are challenges to using pramipexole: 20% stopped pramipexole due to side effects vs 5% placebo. Most common: nausea, headache, dizziness, sleep problems. 5/6
HYPOTHESIS: We targeted dopamine D2/3 receptors with pramipexole instead of the usual serotonergic approach. Dopamine is crucial for reward/pleasure - and anhedonia (can't feel pleasure) is often what persists even after other depression symptoms improve. 4/6
Background: About 30% of our patients don't respond to first-line antidepressants. We recruited people with chronic depression (median 8.5 years) who had tried 3-4 medications without success. These are the patients we struggle to help most. 3/6
FINDINGS: In our randomized controlled trial (n=150), patients receiving pramipexole showed:
• 6.4-point reduction in QIDS scores vs 2.4 for placebo (p<0.0001)
• 44% response rate vs 16% placebo
• 28% remission vs 8% placebo Effect size d=0.87 - this is substantial! 2/6
Our new study published in TheLancetPsych! We found that pramipexole augmentation substantially reduced depressive symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression over 48 weeks of treatment. This is an important advance in how we treat depression! 1/6
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Delighted to announce this position www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/current-vaca.... It's part of the Mental Health Mission Mood Disorders Research Clinic Network, aiming to support clinical trials in mood disorders in the UK. Should be very interesting! oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/mhm/mood-dis...
