Welcome to the Psychiatry in Action lab!
The lab is led by Dr Noham Wolpe, a clinical psychiatrist and researcher. Our broad interest is in how mental health factors, such as mood and motivation, affect our everyday actions and movements.
Recent work
What is mental effort?
Mental effort is a widely used term but is poorly understood. Here's a talk I gave at CRCNS that summarises what we think about mental effort. Preprint can be found here or in our publication page.
Apathy and sedation in schizophrenia
We show that reduced motivation, which is part of what is called 'negative symptoms' in schizophrenia, is partly explained by medication-induced sedation. This has significant implications for the as yet poorly treated negative symptoms in schizophrenia.
Link to full open-access manuscript
The pre-supplementary motor area and inhibition
We show that the pre-supplementary motor area exerts inhibitory control over our voluntary action by dynamically adjusting the thresholds for making a response.
Link to full open-access manuscript
Here's a mini-talk on these findings at the 'EPS Workshop on Decision Making in Voluntary Action' in 2021.
