Supervisors: Professor Verity J Brown, Dr David Tait
Project Description:
We have all experienced the annoyance of inflexible cognitions, such as when a song is ‘stuck in our head’ or we cannot find the solution to a problem and persist with a tactic that evidently does not work. Conversely, we know the joy of when it serves us well and delivers eureka moments, solutions ‘pop’ into mind, or we manage to ‘think outside the box’. For these reasons, we can also appreciate just how devastating are the consequences of impaired cognitive flexibility, which is common in so many psychiatric and neurological disorders. Finding treatments for impaired cognitive flexibility in these conditions has remained elusive, but it fundamentally depends on understanding how the network of interconnected brain regions orchestrates these functions. The student will work on this problem with the ultimate goal of identifying critical pathways that might be disrupted in these conditions and could be targets for therapeutic intervention.
Thus, this proposal has two specific aims: first, using rats, we will begin to map the brain circuits that contribute to the cognitive processes involved in cognitive flexibility and control. The knowledge gained will inform our second aim, which is to develop and validate potential interventions in rats that will translate to the clinic.
Project: Rats are naturally curious and will spontaneously forage for food. Taking advantage of this, we use a bowl-digging task developed in this lab (Birrell & Brown, 2000, J.Neurosci. 20:4320-4324; Tait et al., 2018, Neurosci.Biobehav.Rev 89:72-84) to measure cognitive flexibility, examining brain areas important for shifting the focus of attention and reversing a learned response. To manipulate brain function, we use pharmacogenetics. This involves introducing ‘Designer Receptors’ into target brain regions by surgically administered viral vectors. We then inject ‘Designer Drugs’ which exclusively activate the receptors, which inhibit the activity of the cells that expressing them. Thus, we can temporarily and reversibly inactivate areas in the brain in the awake behaving rat, to learn about how different brain areas contribute to flexibility and control.
Training and environment. The School of Psychology & Neuroscience at University of St Andrews is a thriving research community that covers most aspects of psychology and neuroscience, studying psychological processes a wide range of levels of organisation of from molecular mechanisms of behaviour to whole organism cognitive neuroscience. The school has consistently been ranked one of the best research departments in the UK. All PhD students have a comprehensive individualized ‘Postgraduate Training Programme’, comprising project-specific training, generic professional skills courses, and cross-disciplinary networking opportunities. As a collaboration with an industry partner, this project offers additional training opportunities with Boehringer Ingleheim to learn about pharmaceutical science in a business context, as well as, more generally, about the ‘business of science’.
To apply for this project, please go to this link.
