Ed Bullmore       

Professor of Psychiatry

Tel: +44 (01)1223 336582 Fax: +44 (0)1223 336581 Location: Herchel Smith Email: etb23@cam.ac.uk

Personal Statement

I was always interested in the question of how the brain might explain mental functions and disorders -- which led me into training as a psychiatrist.

This is perhaps not the easiest career move to make in medicine because psychiatry has traditionally been regarded as rather a "low rent" specialisation. I think this prejudice reflects the historical fact that relatively little is yet known about the objective correlates of mental symptoms; but this is changing as neuroscience advances rapidly and techniques like brain imaging are applied to an analysis of psychiatric disorders.

I was very fortunate to train in clinical practice and research methodology at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, where I was supported by the Wellcome Trust and worked closely with Prof Mick Brammer and many other colleagues. We developed various statistical methods for computerised analysis of structural and functional magnetic resonance images of the brain.

The areas of application that have most interested me are schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders, psychopharmacological effects on brain function, and the integration of imaging and genetics.

I have been a Professor of Psychiatry in Cambridge since 1999. I have set up the Brain Mapping Unit here and I am director of functional MRI at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre; I am also a co-director of CAMEO, a new clinical service for patients with early symptoms of psychosis.

I think the future generally looks bright for fundamental progress in our scientific understanding of the problems of psychiatry.

Selected Publications:

1. Inhibition of subliminally primed responses is mediated by the caudate and thalamus: Evidence from functional mri and huntington's disease
   Adam Aron, F Schlaghecken, Paul Fletcher, Edward Bullmore, M Eimer, R Barker, Barbara Sahakian and Trevor Robbins
   Brain. 126(Pt 3):713 -- 723 March 2003
   [application/pdf][Abstract - Link to PubMed]
   
   
2. Stop-signal inhibition disrupted by damage to right inferior frontal hyrus in humans
   Adam Aron, Paul Fletcher, Edward Bullmore, Barbara Sahakian and Trevor Robbins
   Nature Neuroscience. 6(2):115 -- 116 February 2003
   [Abstract - Link to PubMed]
   
   
3. Practice and difficulty evoke anatomically and pharmacologically dissociable brain activation dynamics
   Edward Bullmore, John Suckling, Chris Long, Fernando Zelaya, Garry Honey, Laurence Reed, Carol Routledge, Virginia Ng, Paul Fletcher, John Brown and Steve Williams
   Cerebral Cortex. Advanced Online Publication February 2003
   [application/pdf][Abstract - Link to PubMed]
   
   
4. Dopaminergic drug effects on physiological connectivity in a human cortico-striato-thalamic system
   Garry Honey, John Suckling, Fernando Zelaya, Chris Long, Carol Routledge, S Jackson, Virginia Ng, Paul Fletcher, Steve Williams, John Brown and Edward Bullmore
   Brain. 126(8):1767 -- 1781 August 2003
   [application/pdf][Abstract - Link to PubMed]
   
   
5. Neuroanatomical Abnormalities Before and After Onset of Psychosis: a Cross-sectional and Longitudinal MRI Comparison
   Christos Pantelis, Dennis Velakoulis, Patrick McGorry, Stephen Wood, John Suckling, Lisa Phillips, Alison Yung, Edward Bullmore, Warrick Brewer, Bridget Soulsby, Patricia Desmond and Philip McGuire
   Lancet. 361(9354):281 -- 288 January 2003
   [Abstract - Link to PubMed]