Miss Athina Aruldass

Interests

Immunological interplay in pathoetiology of mood disorders is a long-standing concept dating back to the early 20th century. Over the past two decades, irrefutable evidence linking peripheral inflammation i.e. blood inflammatory markers, and depressive behaviour have begun to evolve. Critically, these findings posit that heightened peripheral inflammation observed in depression is unlikely a coincidence. Thus, this paradigm is now being revisited with wider objectives to (1) identify peripheral biomarker(s) in depression and (2) potentially introduce an immune-based therapeutic intervention. Facilitated by multimodal neuroimaging driven investigations in this area, my current work specifically aims to gain a more nuanced understanding of the immune-brain interaction in depression. This fundamentally involves correlating inflammatory profiles with brain networks to discourse key neuroimmunological mechanisms potentially underlying depressive symptoms i.e cognitive/ behavioural changes.

Research Focus

Equipment

Computational modelling

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)