缅北禁地

Speaker: Professor Roland Zahn, Joint Director, Centre for Affective Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London.

Presentation title: The cognitive neuroscience of mood disorders: implications for novel treatments and stratification

Mood disorders and disturbances occur in patients with frontotemporal and subcortical lesions but are more common in people with macroscopically intact brains. Here, we draw on our work in both patient groups and a model of fronto temporo-subcortical network integration of socio-emotional information via temporal binding to allow for adaptive mood states. We discuss the early descriptions of Kraepelin’s mixed affective states and suggest a model of four mood states (depressed, anxious, irritable, and elated) and their dynamic evolution and mixing. Blame and praise internalisation and externalisation biases are proposed as key mechanisms underpinning mood states, together with approach/withdrawal-related action tendencies.  Whilst self-worth and interest emerge as the most distinctive symptom dimensions, that are necessary for bipolar and recurrent unipolar depressive disorders, we also discuss anxiety as a potential primary symptom in a subgroup of chronic depression. A recent systematic review confirmed the role 
of low human oxytocin function in insecure attachment styles, a known risk factor for depression, rendering people more sensitive to rejection and the resulting reduced self-worth. Yet intriguingly, when seeking to replicate this finding in a well characterised cohort of medication-free patients with remitted MDD, we found that low oxytocin levels were associated with specific types of childhood trauma rather than insecure attachment per se, which we conclude may have driven previous apparent associations with insecure attachment. Based on a neuroanatomical model of the conceptual self, anterior temporal and subgenual frontal networks and their importance for self-blame and worthlessness, as well as the hypothesised role of septo-hypothalamic networks for affiliative interest are discussed. The latter is distinguished from ventral striatal networks as relevant for more general approach-related action tendencies and hedonic interest (anticipatory anhedonia). Lastly, implications for novel treatments and stratification are discussed which use neurostimulation, neurofeedback, pharmacological, as well as digital therapeutics. 

Roland Zahn completed his pre-medical studies at Heidelberg University and his medical degree and doctorate at Aachen University (RWTH), where he spent two years in cognitive neurology before completing his training in psychiatry and psychotherapy at Freiburg University Hospital in 2004. After postdoctoral fellowships at the US National Institutes of Health and the University of Manchester, he joined the Centre for Affective Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London in 2013 as an MRC Clinician Scientist & Senior Clinical Lecturer and since 2022, as a Professor of Mood Disorders & Cognitive Neuroscience. In 2025, he has stepped up as the joint director of the centre. He is also the deputy lead for the Mood Disorders & Psychosis Theme within the Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and Acting Deputy Head of the Department of Psychological Medicine. As an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, his focus has been on mood disorders at the National Service for Affective Disorders at the Maudsley, where he leads the Vagus Nerve Stimulation service, as well as in primary care settings in South London and more recently running a specialist mood clinic within the King’s Student Counselling and Mental Health services.