Ciara McCabe

Email:
c.mccabe@reading.ac.uk
Phone:
+44 (0) 118 378 5450
Job title:
Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health & University Research Fellow

Responsibilities:

Director: Neuroscience of Reward Group (NRG).
Director of Reading Scholars Programme in Psychology, University of Reading.
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Psychiatry, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Section.
University Research Fellow

Areas of interest

Professor Ciara McCabe examines the human reward experience using behavioural techniques and brain imaging. Ciara did her PhD with Professor Leslie on the effects of anti-anxiety drugs in animal models in the Psychology Department at the University of Ulster. She did her first post doc with Professor Nader in primate models of drug addiction in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest University, NC, USA. Ciara then did a second post-doc with Professor Rolls on the human reward response using neuroimaging in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and then worked as a Research Fellow with Professor Harmer and Professor Cowan on the human reward response in psychiatric disorders, using neuroimaging and psychopharmacological challenges, in the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University.

Postgraduate supervision

Current Post Docs and PhD students: Dr Hee Kyoung Ko, Xueqing Ma, Phoenix Byrne, Angad Sahni, Sena Demir, Katie Diab

Past PhD students: Siyabend Kaya, Hanxin Zhang, Soni Chahal, Rebecca Watson, Anna-Lena Frey, Zola Dean, Alex Antonesei, Ewelina Rzepa, Felicity Cowdrey and Anna Nakamura visiting PhD from Tokyo University

Teaching

Lecturer in cognition, learning and neuroscience
MSc and BSc project supervisor.

Research centres and groups

Ciara leads the Neuroscience of Reward Group (NRG) at the University of Reading. Using neurocognitive approaches NRG examines how reward processing is related to depression and in particular the symptom of anhedonia and its treatment. NRG uses several different techniques to examine reward function such as qualitative, behavioural, neuroimaging and psychopharmacological approaches.

Research projects

Funding: Professor McCabe has received funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC), Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), a University of Reading Research Fellowship, The British Science Association (BSA) and industry collaborators such as GWPharma Ltd, EPC flavouring Ltd and Juneobiont PTE. Ltd.

Academic qualifications

BSc Honours Psychology, Queens University Belfast, 1998
PhD Psychology, University of Ulster, 2003
Fellow of Higher Education Authority (FHEA), 2015.

Awards and honours

2022: Finalist in the Research Engagement and Impact Awards, University of Reading
2019: Invited by the Royal Society to give flash talk to the 3rd UK-Japan Frontiers of Science Symposium “Computational Brain Modelling and Brain-computer Interfaces”, Chiba, Japan.
2017: Invited to give "New Talent Talk" from Lundbeck Foundation, The Brain Prize Meeting, “Rewarding Neuroscience” Copenhagen.
2015: Senior Non-Clinical Psychopharmacology Award: The British Association of Psychopharmacology, Bristol.
2015: In Vivo Award: British Association for Psychopharmacology, Bristol.
2014: In Vivo Award: British Association for Psychopharmacology, Cambridge.
2012: Rafaelsen Investigator Award: The International College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Stockholm.
2010: Fellowship Award: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Amsterdam.
2008: Eli Lilly (Industry) Fellowship Award: presented at the British Association for Psychopharmacology, Oxford.

Websites/blogs

Neuroscience of Reward Group