Current Research
I am the director of the Psychopharmacology and Emotional Research Lab (PERL) based at the University Department of Psychiatry in Oxford. We are a multi-disciplinary team including cognitive neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychopharmacologists and psychologists.
We focus on the psychological mechanisms of antidepressant drug action with conventional and novel candidate treatments, challenging the typical division between these different approaches. To do this, we apply an experimental medicine approach, focused on neurocognitive measures of emotional processing in both healthy volunteers and patient samples.
This research helps to integrate psychological and pharmacological views of depression and treatment and has challenged the way in which we typically consider drug treatment for depression to work (see Harmer et al 2017). In addition this research has led to the development of human experimental models to explore the effects of novel drugs for the treatment of depression and anxiety. This work has also been applied in the clinic to provide an earlier marker of SSRI non-response in primary care (Browning et al., 2021).
External Positions
Executive Committee Officer, European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP)
Council, British Neuroscience Association (BNA)
NIHR panel Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation panel member
Wellcome Trust Expert Review Panellist (2016-2019)
Associate Editor for Psychological Medicine
Editorial board membership Biological Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Catherine Harmer
DPhil, MA, DipLATHE
Associate Head of Department (People and Culture), Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College
External Links
Read our Mental Elf blog on SSRIs and Psychotherapy for adolescent depression
https://www.nationalelfservice.net/treatment/
antidepressants/antidepressants-and-
psychotherapy-for-adolescent-depression-
can-they-be-compared-activeingredientsmh/
Watch our short video on SSRI treatment in young people, as part of the Wellcome Trust Commission on active ingredients
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4q1R53CWI
Hear me chat about serotonin on 'Stronger Stuff'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/
Follow us on twitter @OxfordPERL
Experimental Medicine Hub
We have launched our NIHR BRC experimental medicine hub linking academia and industry to facilitate the use of experimental medicine approaches for treatment development - Experimental Medicine Industry Partnership (EMIP). See our AIM day blogs for our launch event
https://oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/a-collection-of-blogs-from-the-oxford-health-brc-aimday/
Recent publications
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The long-term effects of ABM on symptom severity in patients with recurrent depression: A randomized sham-controlled trial.
Journal article
Bø R. et al, (2023), J Affect Disord, 340, 886 - 892
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Cognitive predictors of stress-induced mood malleability in depression.
Journal article
Bø R. et al, (2023), Anxiety Stress Coping, 1 - 15
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Examining attentional functioning in depression using a personalized network approach: A proof-of-principle study
Journal article
Kraft B. et al, (2023), Psychiatry Research Communications, 3
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Combining antidepressants and attention bias modification in primary health care (DEPTREAT): Protocol for a pragmatic randomized controlled trial.
Journal article
Landrø NI. et al, (2023), Contemp Clin Trials, 133
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Effects of ulotaront on brain circuits of reward, working memory, and emotion processing in healthy volunteers with high or low schizotypy.
Journal article
Perini F. et al, (2023), Schizophrenia (Heidelb), 9
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The pharmacological bases for repurposing statins in depression: a review of mechanistic studies.
Journal article
De Giorgi R. et al, (2023), Transl Psychiatry, 13
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The Serotonin 1A (5-HT1A) Receptor as a Pharmacological Target in Depression.
Journal article
Smith ALW. et al, (2023), CNS Drugs
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Effect of lithium administration on brain activity under an emotion regulation paradigm in healthy participants: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Journal article
Artiach Hortelano P. et al, (2023), Psychopharmacology (Berl)
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Pramipexole Enhances Reward Learning by Preserving Value Estimates.
Journal article
Halahakoon DC. et al, (2023), Biol Psychiatry