Research

Research conducted in the Centre for Clinical, Social and Cognitive Neuroscience bridges the gap between questions on fundamental aspects of human experience and their neurocognitive basis, and applied research that has direct impact for stakeholders in the general population, neurodiverse communities and clinical populations.

We seek to understand, transform, and enrich the lives of individuals and communities through improved understanding of the biological, neural and cognitive underpinnings of the human experience, with an emphasis on mental health and wellbeing and close collaboration with stakeholder communities.

Our members conduct research in four key themes:

Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience

• understand the emergence, maintenance, and treatment of psychosis, utilizing experimental, neuroimaging and genetic methods.
• understand the neurocognitive mechanisms that underpin common mental health difficulties among neurodiverse communities, such as autistic individuals.
• investigate the neural basis of psychological therapies, like mindfulness-based therapy.

Social Psychology and Neuroscience

• study the mechanisms that underlie various aspects of social functioning, such as loneliness and social isolation, in the general population and in individuals with psychotic disorders, other mental health conditions and neurodevelopmental disorders.
• understand the neural basis of prosocial behaviour.
• shed light on the perceptual mechanisms (e.g., somatosensory attention, face perception, early visual processing) that underpin our social interactions.
• enhance (social) cognition in psychosis.

Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience

• understand the role of body perception in embodied cognition, including emotion perception and self-awareness.
• aid temporal perception in sports decision making.
• mitigate attentional biases in clinical and health psychology.

Mathematical Psychology and Neuroscience

• develop an artificial intelligence system to identify problem gambling cues.
• develop a quantum probability framework for human probabilistic inference.