Prof Ciara McCabe

Experts / Prof Ciara McCabe

Prof Ciara McCabe

Professor; Reading University

Ciara McCabe is Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health and a University Research Fellow at Reading University. She has been director of the Neuroscience of Reward Group at Reading since 2013. She examines the processing of primary and secondary rewards at the behavioural and neural level and how this relates to the symptom of anhedonia in depression. She also examines how drug treatments interact with the reward response.

Ciara did her BSc in Psychology at Queens University, Belfast. She did her PhD on the effects of anxiolytic drugs on animal models of frustrative non-reward at the University of Ulster, in collaboration with Merck, Sharpe and Dohme. She did her first post doc in primate models of drug addiction at Wake Forest, NC, USA.

Ciara then moved to the Experimental Psychology Department at Oxford University to work on the brain’s response to primary rewards in humans and subsequently to the Psychiatry Department at Oxford University to work on neuropsychopharmacology and reward processing in patient and at-risk groups.

She was awarded the Senior Non-Clinical Psychopharmacology Award and two separate In-Vivo Awards from The British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP). She was also awarded the Rafaelsen Investigator Award from The International College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a Fellowship Award from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and an Eli Lilly Fellowship Award presented at the BAP. She has held funding from the Medical Research Council and has had various Industry collaborations.

Ciara has also been Director of the Reading Scholars Program in Psychology a widening participation program for under-represented students. Ciara was elected as a council member of the British Association of Psychopharmacology and as a trustee of the charity Immigrant Counselling and Psychotherapy (ICAP) for five years each.

Menopause: HRT linked to depression – here’s what the evidence actually says

A growing number of women are turning to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to alleviate distressing symptoms of the menopause – including hot flushes, bladder weakness, vaginal dryness, joint pain, brain fog, sleep disturbances, anxiety and depression.

Menopause: HRT linked to depression – here’s what the evidence actually says

A growing number of women are turning to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to alleviate distressing symptoms of the menopause – including hot flushes, bladder weakness, vaginal dryness, joint pain, brain fog, sleep disturbances, anxiety and depression.

By Prof Ciara McCabe