News

Congratulations to Dr Karen Ersche on being awarded 2012 British Association for Psychopharmacology Prize

Cambridge Neuroscientist Dr Karen Ersche has recently been awarded a 2012 British Association for Psychopharmacology Prize. Awarded annually, this award recognises outstanding research by both clinical and non-clinical researchers in the field of psychopharmacology. Karen will receive the prize at the Summer Meeting for the British Association for Psychopharmacology in Harrogate in July, where she will also be presenting her work.

Karen has published a large number of papers since completing her PhD, with a strong focus on the neuropsychological correlates of addictive behaviour and drug dependence. She is based at the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute.

Some of Karen’s most recent work, published in February in Science, shows that certain brain systems associated with self-control are abnormal in stimulant-dependent drug users and also in their healthy siblings. This ground-breaking work gives an exciting insight into the causes of drug-dependence, suggesting that some brain abnormalities may indicate a vulnerability for drug-dependence long before that dependence occurs. Click here for coverage of this research. More recently, Karen was involved in a study published in Molecular Psychiatry, that found age-related loss of grey matter in the brain is greater in people who are dependent on cocaine than in the healthy population.

Cambridge Neuroscience would like to congratulate Karen on this award.

Article adapted from Department of Psychiatry News

Posted on 23/05/2012