Professor Angela Roberts
- Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience
- Professorial Fellow, Girton College
About
Angela Roberts received her degree in Neurobiology from the University of Sussex (1981) and her PhD in neuroendocrine control of reproduction from the University of Cambridge (1985) under the supervision of Joe Herbert in the Department of Anatomy. She stayed on in Cambridge and did her postdoctoral training in the Department of Experimental Psychology with Trevor Robbins where she held a Royal Society Research Fellowship from 1992-96. She then took up a teaching appointment in the Department of Anatomy and there began her studies on the prefrontal control of emotion regulation. Currently she undertakes the scientific leadership of the marmoset research centre at Cambridge and is Chair of the steering committee for a new Laboratory of Translational Neuroimaging. She also sits on the Executive committee of Cambridge Neuroscience.
She is currently an associate editor for Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, a field Editor for the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology and sits on the Advisory Board for Neuron. She has sat on the Council for European Brain and Behavior Society (2000-2002) and British Association of Psychopharmacology (2015-2019). She is currently Secretary for Non-Clinical External Affairs for BAP.
In 2016 she was elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences and has been awarded the 2020 Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience jointly with Robert Desimone at MIT.
Research
I am interested in the neural circuits underlying the regulation of cognition and emotion of relevance to our understanding of a variety of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. In particular, my lab focuses on the prefrontal cortex and subcortical circuitry involved in processing positive and negative emotions, both in adulthood and more recently in development. The overall aim is to fractionate the neurocognitive circuits that underlie the regulation of emotion and to relate them to the distinct symptoms of emotion dysregulation present, not only in anxiety and depression, but also schizophrenia, autism and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease. We combine a range of different experimental techniques and approaches including neuropsychopharmacology, remote measurement of cardiovascular activity, in vivo microdialysis, microPET and MRI. The lab is also interested in the relationship of activity in these neurocognitive circuits with individual differences in behavioural phenotypes, e.g. trait anxiety, and genotypes, during development as well as in adulthood.
Currently funded by an MRC Programme Grant and a WT Investigator award.
Current Lab members:
Dr Christian Wood
Dr Kevin Mulvihill
Dr Arek Stasiak
Dr Stacey Gould
Dr Taylor Lynn-Jones
Mrs Gemma Cockcroft (RA)
Mrs Lauren McIver (RA)
Graduate Students:
Ms Xinhu Zhang
Ms Aradna Garcia-Vergara
Ms Jessica Phan (NIH-OxCam)
Ms Spatika Jayaram (Gates Scholar)
Ms Monique Wang (Gates Scholar)
Collaborators:
Professor Trevor Robbins
Professor Barry Everitt
Dr Steve Sawiak
Dr Jeff Dalley
Dr Rudolf Cardinal
Dr Judith Burkhart (Zurich)
Dr Eduardo Gascon-Gonzalo (Marseille)
Research News
Publications
Selected publications
Teaching and supervision
Organiser of Part II Neuroscience in PDN
Organiser and Lecturer in Module N6, Part II PDN
Organiser of Module N2, Part II PDN
Lecturer in Part 1B Neurobiology of human and animal behaviour MVST
Demonstrator in Part 1B Neuroanatomy practicals, MST