OUR PROJECTS

Neureka

Led by the Gillan Lab, the neureka project aims to use a smartphone app to gather enormous brain health datasets, spanning ecological momentary assessment of compulsivity and mood, repeated cognitive assessment and lifestyle monitoring. Neureka has over 10,000 registered users and operates in >90 countrires around the world!

IMAGEN

The IMAGEN study a European research project examining how biological, psychological, and environmental factors during adolescence may influence brain development and mental health. Using brain imaging and genetics, the project will help develop prevention strategies and improved therapies for mental health disorders in the future.

PREVENT

The PREVENT study aims to establish novel and clinically applicable early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease, 20 to 40 years prior to its clinical diagnosis. It is designed in response to the pandemic of dementia – projected to increase from 46.8 million in 2015 to 131.5 million in 2050. Present drug treatments have limited ability to stop or even delay cognitive decline. The early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease that this study will develop will serve as essential prerequisites to future, population-wide early intervention programs, both pharmaceutical and environmental. Therefore, this work has tremendous potential to improve early detection, treatment and ultimately lead to the prevention of Alzheimer’s dementia.

FRAILMatics

FRAILMatics’ quest is to research and develop more accurate frailty tools that without expert input automatically identify subtle dysregulated responses to stressors across physiological systems. For this quest, FRAILMatics has access to population and clinical cohorts that contain a vast amount of suitable cross-sectional and longitudinal data.

TROPIC

Led by Prof. Ortuno, TROPIC uses our existing clinical expertise and technology-assisted solutions to address features of post-COVID-19 fatigue by quantifying physiological signatures of adverse sequelae in adult patients previously diagnosed with COVID-19, who are now COVID-19 negative. Our suite of assessments in St James’s Hospital encompasses physical deconditioning, orthostatic instability, neurocognitive deficits and respiratory sequelae.

InDecision

Pinpointing the mechanistic origins of inter-individual differences in decision making is a central goal of modern psychology and a considerable challenge because even elementary perceptual choices rely on a multitude of sensory, cognitive, motivational and motoric processes. InDecision will pioneer a ground-breaking decision modelling framework in which models are constructed and evaluated based on their ability to explain key observable aspects of the neural implementation of the human decision process in addition to its behavioural output. This ambitious goal is made possible by recent advances in non-invasive electrophysiology which enable direct observation, measurement and manipulation of the decision process as it unfolds in the human brain.

FOUNDCOG

How does the human mind develop? The FOUNDCOG project aims to address this question by using neuroimaging of infants, in their critical first year after birth, to capture the development of the brain and its functions. We will interpret the results by comparing them to computational models of learning from artificial intelligence. In addition to characterising the development of the human mind, we aim to understand how it is disrupted by brain injury and to produce new diagnostic tools for neonatologists.

ReD-Lat

The Multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat, supported by the NIH-NIA, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, and the GBHI) is an ongoing international initiative aimed at recruiting participants with AD, FTD, and controls from 12 sites in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the US (> 4200 participants, 2100 controls, 1050 AD patients, and 1050 FTD patients). RedLat long-term goal is to identify the unique genetic and SES/SDH factors that drive AD and FTD presentation in LAC relative to the US, including risk factors, cognitive profiles and brain imaging