Studying the Relationships between our Bodily Awareness, Emotions and Perceptions in Schizotypy
Bodily signals provide vital information to the brain about the world and how the world is impacting on the body. We are interested in understanding how awareness of our bodily signals relates to the experience of emotions and perceptions of ourselves and the world. This is important for our understanding of conditions like psychosis and schizophrenia in which people’s experiences of their body, their self and the world can be dramatically changed
Examining the Nature and Mechanisms of Psychotic Experiences in Borderline Personality Disorder
In the DSM-IV psychotic experiences in BPD were thought to be transient and stress-related but there is now good evidence that they can often be longstanding, are significantly associated with trauma and very unstable moods
Examining the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Eating Disorder Symptomatology and Service Utilisation
Individuals who suffer with eating disorders may be particularly vulnerable to poor mental health outcomes in response to the pandemic due to serious pre-existing illness and disruptions to normal routines, including access to NHS mental health services
The SPICE Study
In collaboration with the Metabolic Research Laboratories, this work explores the ways in which environmental cues are integrated with internal homeostatic signals in order to drive and constrain eating
Behaviour Change by Design
Paul is an Investigator on the “Behaviour Change by Design” research programme, funded by a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award. The overall aim of which is to accelerate progress in changing behaviour by redesigning environments to improve health for all
The Insight Project
Brain-Body Interactions and Health Neuroscience. Paul is especially interested in whether we may harness the power of video games in measuring and monitoring – and potentially manipulating or treating – mental distress. He has been collaborating for several years with the Cambridge-based video game design studio, Ninja Theory. He was part of the BAFTA-winning development team who made Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which won acclaim for its depiction of a heroine struggling with voices and visions and has subsequently extended his collaborations with Ninja Theory to develop The Insight Project, which aims to explore the potential for video game design and technology, in partnership with cognitive neuroscience, to study and alleviate mental distress
Embodied Computation Group
A multidisciplinary research group located at Aarhus University and Cambridge Psychiatry, led by Dr Micah Allen. This research investigates how our decision-making, emotion, and conscious perception are shaped by visceral and embodied processes. To probe the embodied brain, we use tools like computational modelling, psychophysics, physiological measures, and advanced neuroimaging. Our work is comprised both of basic research into the neural mechanisms underpinning visceral inference, and clinical research seeking to apply these mechanisms to better understand populations suffering from disordered brain-body interaction and mental illness. Our work is supported by an extensive network of international collaborations, as well as generous support from the Lundbeck Foundation, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, and Cambridge Psychiatry
