Professor Matt Jones, Director of Bristol Neuroscience said: “Mental Health Awareness Week is a timely reminder that Bristol Neuroscience is about brain research for better lives, making brain biology matter to society and working together to improve mental health diagnosis and treatment for all.
“These new projects cover every level, from the molecules of our genetic code, to sleep hygiene and drug addiction. Only teams of neuroscientists working on this scale are able to link these levels, helping every brain navigate modern life and stay mentally healthy and happy.”
Dr Mike Ashby, Senior Lecturer in the School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience (PPN) has led Bristol’s contributions to the new Medical Research Council (MRC) National Mouse Genetics Network. Bristol has partnered with Cardiff University, King's College London and the Universities of Lancaster, Leeds and Oxford to form the MURIDAE (Modalities for Understanding, Recording and Integrating Data Across Early life) cluster, which has been awarded £2.7 million to unravel mechanisms of early brain development using mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Sleep disruption is a common early life adversity, particularly for adolescents. Sleep helps nurture healthy brain development, so sleep disruption may be particularly damaging to the brains of young people, and often precedes the onset of disorders including anxiety and depression.
Esther Crawley, Professor of Child Health in Bristol Medical School, will lead a team of epidemiologists, psychologists, sociologists and engineers on a pioneering project, called ‘Sleep Tracking and Treatment for Adolescent Mental health Problems (STTAMP)’.
The team will use smartphone apps to detect and treat insomnia before it takes root, setting young people back on track and avoiding long-term mental health problems. The £1 million programme will be funded predominantly by The Prudence Trust, with additional University of Bristol funding for a Clinical PhD.
It is widely known that many mental health disorders are linked to genetic variation. Professor Matt Jones has teamed up with collaborators at Cardiff University and University College London (UCL), who have been awarded a £2 million MRC grant to study young people at high genetic risk of schizophrenia.
The research programme will combine computational analyses of brain activity in adolescents, in mouse genetic models and in patient-derived neurons to uncover the mechanisms linking genetic mutations to brain function, paving the way for more precise treatments in psychiatry.
Finally, Dr Ana Abdala Sheikh, Senior Lecturer in PPN and Graeme Henderson, Professor of Pharmacology, along with colleagues Dr Jo Kesten and Professor Matt Hickman in Bristol’s Population Health Sciences and Dr Chris Bailey from the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at the University of Bath, have also been awarded a £1 million MRC grant to study the lethal interactions between benzodiazepines and opioids.
The multidisciplinary research will combine interviewing patients with experimental laboratory studies to help reduce the risk of overdose deaths in opioid users.
Loneliness: the focus for 2022
COVID-19 created havoc in many different ways and on many different levels. Articles on the effects of the pandemic on mental health were appearing just a few months after the initial lockdown in March 2020. Children, adolescents and the elderly seemed to be particularly affected by feelings of isolation and loneliness, with researchers predicting that children’s loneliness could manifest in depression for years to come.
With over 175,000 deaths due to the coronavirus, bereavement played a significant role in feelings of loss and isolation, particularly when the loss was unexpected, hospital visits forbidden, and funeral services restricted.
A two-year study, led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with Age UK, highlights the issues faced by older men, many of whom describe feeling socially excluded, overlooked, cut-off and feeling 'left out of things' - all of which have a range of negative impacts on day-to-day life. These feelings were triggered by a variety of life events, including loss of a partner, retirement or relocation.
A key finding of the report, which researchers hope will influence policy makers, was that men valued mixed-age groups which mirror social interactions in everyday life, as opposed to groups specifically targeting older people. Equally, men valued groups that facilitated emotional and social ties with other men.
A study, co-led by the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group (TARG) in Bristol's School of Psychological Science and the department of Psychiatry of Amsterdam UMC hospital in the Netherlands, found evidence for a causal link between prolonged experience of loneliness and smoking.
Results implied that being lonelier increases the likelihood of starting smoking, the number of cigarettes smoked per day and decreases the likelihood of successfully quitting. This reflects the trends observed during the pandemic - YouGov’s Covid-19 tracker suggests 2.2 million people across the UK are smoking more than they were before lockdown. In the other direction, there was also evidence that starting to smoke increased individuals’ loneliness.
Looking forward
These are just a few examples of Bristol’s research and expertise in mental health. Understanding the brain is one of the major intellectual challenges of the 21st Century. This challenge is the focus of Bristol Neuroscience.
Our vision is to conduct research that will bring wide-ranging and far-reaching benefits to the individual and across society.