Dr Angharad de Cates BMBCh (Hons), DPhil, PGCert Higher Ed, MRCPsych, FHEA

School of Psychology
NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry

Contact details

Email: a.n.decates@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @angharaddecates

Angharad is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and an Honorary Member of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. Her main area of research involves investigating the neurocognitive underpinnings of depression and psychosis: how these affect the development and prognosis of mental illnesses, and how we can potentially modulate cognitive problems with treatments.

Qualifications

PhD Oxford
PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Oxford
MRCPsych
MSc Warwick
BMBCH (Hons) Oxford

Biography

Angharad qualified from the University of Oxford, and completed NIHR Academic Foundation and Academic Clinical Fellow posts at the University of Warwick. She then moved to Oxford to complete a Wellcome Trust funded DPhil (working on the first fMRI studies of medications that activate the 5HT4 receptor and how these might be useful for cognition), and subsequently a Guarantors of Brain Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship.

She has been supervised by Catherine Harmer, Phil Cowen and Susannah Murphy (DoP, Oxford), Thomas Nichols and Anya Topiwala (BDI, Oxford), Matthew Broome and Rachel Upthegrove (Birmingham) and Scott Weich (Sheffield).

She is now completing her psychiatry residency in the West Midlands while continuing her research supported by the NIHR with a Clinical Lectureship.

Postgraduate supervision

Always available for discussions regarding potential postgraduate projects.

Research

Angharad’s research interests include neurocognition, self-harm and psychopharmacology across different mental illnesses - especially involving mood and psychotic disorders. Currently, she is particularly interested in investigating whether one group of new agents, which act as agonists at the 5-HT4 receptor, may work as antidepressants and / or improve cognition in humans using neuropsychological tasks and brain imaging.

Other activities

Section Editor, British Journal of Psychiatry
Higher Trainee Representative to the Royal College of Psychiatrists Psychopharmacology Committee
West Midlands ICAT West Midlands Clinical Lecturer Representative

Publications

de Cates AN, Martens MAG, Wright LC, Gibson D, Spitz G, Gould van Praag CD, Suri S, Cowen PJ, Murphy SE and Harmer CJ (2023). 5-HT4 receptor agonist effects on functional connectivity in the human brain; Implications for pro-cognitive action. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 8(11), 1124-1134

de Cates AN, Wright LC, Martens MAG, Gibson D, Turkmen C, Filippini N, Cowen PJ, Harmer CJ, Murphy SE (2021). Déjà vu? Neural and behavioural effects of the 5-HT4 receptor agonist, prucalopride, in a hippocampal-dependent memory task. Translational Psychiatry 11, 497

Murphy SE,de Cates AN,Gillespie AL, Godlewska BR, Scaife JC, Wright LC, Cowen PJ, Harmer CJ (2021). Translating the promise of 5HT₄ receptor agonists for the treatment of depression. Psychological Medicine 1-10.

de Cates AN, Catone G, Marwaha S, Bebbington P, Humpston CS, Broome MR (2021). Self-harm, suicidal ideation, and the positive symptoms of psychosis: Cross-sectional and prospective data from a national household survey. Schizophrenia Research 233, 80-88

de Cates AN, Rees K, Jollant F, Perry B, Bennett K, Joyce K, Leyden E, Harmer C, Hawton K, van Heeringen K, Broome MR (2016). Are neurocognitive factors associated with repeat self-harm? A systematic review. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 72:261-277

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