Dr Charlotte Rae
Biological basis of wellbeing, and impacts of clinical conditions & lifestyle
Research in the Adaptive Behavioural Control lab investigates the processes by which how we feel (interoception) influences how we behave (action), extending from basic science, to clinical conditions such as Tourette syndrome, and applied settings such as how work and sleep patterns affect our cognition and behaviour. We use a combination of cognitive neuroscience techniques, including fMRI, diffusion MRI, psychophysiology, and behavioural tasks with computational modelling. We use these to study how signals from the body cue our actions (and our inactions), how these processes are altered in neuropsychiatric conditions (in particular, Tourette syndrome), and the impact of lifestyle challenges, such as not getting enough sleep and working long hours.
Projects in the lab may involve human neuroimaging studies, particularly fMRI with connectivity analysis techniques, in healthy participants and in applied groups, such as employees reducing their hours at work. Projects may also involve physiological measurements (such as ECG or sleep monitoring with actigraphy), and computational modelling (such as drift diffusion models of reaction time).
In two recent projects, we have been investigating neural markers of working long hours in the UK Biobank with a ‘big data’ approach, and how wellbeing and brain function change when employees in local businesses switch to a ‘4 day working week’ (see our for more details).
Students can acquire skills in programming (e.g. matlab), neuroanatomy, MRI data acquisition and analysis, and psychophysiological techniques, and working with clinical and applied populations.
Visit the Adaptive Behavioural Control Lab pages for more details and a full list of publications.
Collaborators within ßÏßÏÊÓƵ Neuroscience include:
Key references
- Rae CL, Critchley HD, Seth AK. (2019). A Bayesian account of the sensory-motor interactions underlying symptoms of Tourette Syndrome. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10, 29. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00029, PMID: 30890965
- Rae CL, Polyanska L, Gould van Praag CD, Parkinson J, Bouyagoub S, Nagai Y, Seth AK, Harrison N, Garfinkel SN, Critchley HD. (2018). Face perception enhances insula and motor network reactivity in Tourette Syndrome. Brain, 141, 3249-3261. DOI: 10.1093/brain/awy254, PMID: 30346484
- Rae CL, Botan VE, Gould van Praag CD, Herman AM, Nyyssonen JAK, Watson DR, Duka T, Garfinkel SN, Critchley HD. (2018). Response inhibition on the stop signal task improves during cardiac contraction. Scientific Reports, 8, 9136. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-27513-y, PMID: 29904123
- Rae CL, Hughes LE, Anderson MC, Rowe JB. (2015). The prefrontal cortex achieves inhibitory control by facilitating subcortical motor pathway connectivity. Journal of Neuroscience, 35, 786-794. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3093-13.2015, PMID: 25589771.