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 primarily by functional MRI, my current work specifically aims to gain a more nuanced understanding of brain functional abnormalities in inflammation-linked depression. This fundamentally involves correlating peripheral blood immune markers with whole-brain functional connectivity and regional brain activation to reward/punishment stimuli.

Research Focus

Equipment

Behavioural analysis

Computational modelling

Cross-sectional and cohort studies

Immunohistochemistry

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)