About Us

At the Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit (CPU) researchers are addressing the following questions:

• How do drugs act on the brain to affect human cognition, behaviour and emotion?
• Why are some individuals more vulnerable than others to the harmful effects of drugs?
• What mechanisms underpin the transition from occasional drug use to addiction?
• How well can drugs, given acutely or chronically, model psychotic symptoms and what implications does this have for treating psychoses?
• Can we find an effective pharmacological treatment for cannabis addiction?
• Can maladaptive reward memories be re-written to treat drug addiction?
• Is it possible to use neuroimaging to measure when memories are updating? 
• What are the receptor pathways involved in memory plasticity and can these be targeted in humans?

We use a wide range of methods:

• RCTs (Randomised Controlled Trials) to investigate new treatments for addiction,
• Behavioural and neuropsychological assessments
• Psychophysiological recordings
• Neuroimaging (fMRI, PET & EEG)

We work in:

• 3 laboratories which are equipped for clinical trials, biological sampling, eye-movement and other types of psychophysiological measurements
• Drug treatment services in the local area
• Imaging facilities at UCL and with our collaborators at IMANOVA
•  …We have been known to set up laboratories in nightclubs