Jonathan Flint
Co-Director, James Martin 21st Century School, Programme for Mind and the Machine, University of Oxford
Speaker
Jonathan
Flint is the Co-Director, James Martin 21st
Century School, Programme for Mind and the Machine. He graduated in Medicine
from University of Oxford in 1988 and went on to work at the John Radcliffe Hospital,
Maudsley and Bethlam Hospitals and Great Ormond Street Hospital. He studied
molecular genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, and earned an MRC Psychiatry
at the University of Oxford, in 1993. He has had numerous awards including: Wellcome
Trust Career Development Fellow, Institute of Molecular Medicine; 1998-2007,
Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow, then since 2007, Wellcome Trust
Principal Fellow, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. Wellcome Trust
Principal Fellow and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist; Michael Davys Professor
of Neuroscience.
Presentation Summary
The World Health Organization has
identified depression as the potential cause of a major health crisis in terms
of impact on population health, quality of life and susceptibility to other
diseases.
Understanding the biological basis of
common disorders such as depression and anxiety is a starting point for
developing effective therapies. Research suggests that behaviours and emotions
are produced at the basic as at level of brain circuitry and that when problems
arise they are problems of brain activity.
This has been verified with a study of the
brains of flies. By modifying the genetic code of a fly’s brain, its movement
can be controlled remotely using a light stimulus. The next step is to use this
knowledge to gain insights into how brain circuitry works and how the findings
may translate to the human brain. The goal is to better understanding what goes
wrong with the brain in the case of mental illness.
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