Associate Professor Laurel Morris is part of the NeuroSCOPE Lab. We spoke to her ahead of her Departmental Seminar.
Tell us a little about yourself, and what attracted you to working at the University of Oxford?
I grew up in Manchester, UK and have also spent time in New York and Florida. Apart from being home to world-class research, technological advancements and inspirational minds, Oxford is one of the most beautiful places to live, with rich and diverse cultural offerings.
How did you get to where you are today? Can you tell us more about your career path?
I attended a state school in Manchester and studied Pharmacology for my undergraduate degree. While I do love molecular biochemistry, I have always been most interested in human behavior. For that reason I decided to pursue a MSc in Neuroscience (focusing on cognitive neuroscience) and then a PhD in Experimental Psychology (focusing on neuroimaging applications). Happily, during my post-doc I was able to get back to my pharmacology routes by working in a highly translational hospital-based research group.
Can you give us a brief overview of your research?
My research aims to characterize motivational changes in people with depression. This involves using behavioral measures, cognitive tests, neuroimaging and digital assessments to try to measure and track the various cognitive and psychological processes that give rise to motivational dysfunction. With MRI, we use a range of different types of sequences at high-field (7-Tesla), in order to develop a well-rounded and high-resolution characterization of brain networks that we think regulate motivational processes.
What is the aim/vision for your research?
The aim is to ultimately help people with motivational issues understand where this problem is coming from (by better characterizing what leads to motivational problems), and to help clinicians develop better tools to treat these underlying drivers. Treatment development could be pharmacological, psychological or device-based via brain stimulation or wearable biofeedback.
What can we expect from your Departmental Seminar?
A tour around some exciting new methods that can be used to study motivational systems in the brain, and what that might tell us about depression.