Trevor W Robbins

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITIONS:
Trevor Robbins was appointed in 1997 as the Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He was elected to the Chair of Experimental Psychology (and Head of Department) at Cambridge from October 2002. He is also Director of the newly-established Cambridge MRC Centre in Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience, the main objective of which is to inter-relate basic and clinical research in Psychiatry and Neurology for such conditions as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases, frontal lobe injury, schizophrenia, depression, drug addiction and developmental syndromes such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES, AWARDS:
Professor Robbins is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has been President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (1992-1994) and he won that Society’s inaugural Distinguished Scientist Award in 2001. He was also President of the British Association of Psychopharmacology from 1996 to 1997. He has been included on a list of the 100 most cited neuroscientists by ISI. He has published nearly five hundred full papers in scientific journals and has co-edited three books (Psychology for Medicine: The Prefrontal Cortex; Executive and Cognitive Function, and Disorders of Brain and Mind).

EDITORSHIPS, MEMBERSHIPS:
Professor Robbins has edited the journal Psychopharmacology since 1980 and joined the editorial board of Science in January 2003. He has been a member of the Medical Research Council (UK) and chaired the Neuroscience and Mental Health Board from 1995 until 1999.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Research interests span the areas of cognitive neuroscience, behavioural neuroscience and psychopharmacology. Main work focuses on the functions of the frontal lobes of the brain and their connections with other regions. These brain systems are relevant to such psychiatric and neurological disorders as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, dementia, schizophrenia, depression, drug addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, as well as frontal lobe injury. The lab uses a variety of methods for studying these systems, including sophisticated psychological paradigms for investigating cognitive functions and impulsivity in both normal subjects and patients; these include the computerised CANTAB battery. Also employed are MRI or PET to determine where in the human brain various cognitive operations are carried out. We are also interested in establishing how drugs work to produce changes in brain chemistry, and how these affect behaviour.

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