Dr Paul Fletcher

University position
Reader
Dr Paul Fletcher is pleased to consider applications from prospective PhD students.
Departments
Institutes
Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute
Home page
http://www.psychiatry.cam.ac.uk
Research Theme
Interests
I am interested in psychosis. I agree with the long tradition of clinical psychiatric research which suggests that, during a psychotic illness, the world is a strange place because strange associations are formed and inconsequential stimuli are assigned undue weight. This can be extremely unpleasant. I think that, if we can understand the brain basis for how associations are made and how we come to think of particular environmental stimuli as important, then perhaps we can apply this to understanding psychotic symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations and thought disorder.
I use combined functional neuroimaging and pharmacological experiments together with studies with patients in order to explore the extent to which such symptoms may be related to deficits in basic learning processes.
Research Focus
KeywordsPsychosis Schizophrenia Learning Memory |
Clinical conditionsSchizophrenia |
Equipment
Neuropsychological testing
Collaborators
Cambridge | United KingdomChris Frith Web: http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk |
Key publications
Fletcher PC, Honey GD (2006), “Schizophrenia, ketamine and cannabis: evidence of overlapping memory deficits” Trends in the Cognitive Sciences 10(4):167-174 Details
Pomarol-Clotet E, Honey GD, Murray GK, Corlett PR, Absalom AR, Lee M, McKenna PJ, Bullmore ET, Fletcher PC (2006), “Physiological effects of ketamine in healthy volunteers: Phenomenological study” British Journal of Psychiatry 189:173-179 Details
Fletcher PC, Zafiris O, Frith CD, Honey RAE, P Corlett, Zilles K, Fink GR (2005), “On the benefits of not trying: brain activity and connectivity reflecting the interactions of explicit and implicit sequence learning” Cerebral Cortex 15:1002-1015

