The Systems and Computational Neuroscience group applies tools from physics, engineering and network science to fundamental questions in neuroscience and mental health.

Research

This section is under construction – check back soon! 

A key aim of the group is to uncover the biological basis of complex psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. More broadly, we are interested in understanding structure-function relationships in the human brain, from the microscopic scale of neurons to the large-scale connectivity of brain regions, in both health and disease. We also seek to find mechanistic links connecting our understanding across scales, from genes to cells, circuits, tissues, to the whole brain and all the way to behaviour.

We have a diverse team working on a variety of projects ranging from studying multilayer networks of neuromodulation in C. elegans, to neuroimaging studies of brain development and rodent models of depression, to statistical methods for analysing transcriptomic data and linking these to brain imaging. We are also interested in in-silico models of cognitive function in health and disease.

People

Prof Petra Vertes Group Leader Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute in London Visiting Researcher at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Contact: pv226[at]cam.ac.uk Research profile>>

Agoston Mihalik Postodctoral Research Fellow	Richard Dear  PhD student Funded by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship Research profile>>	Lena Dorfschmidt PhD student Jointly supervised with Ed Bullmore (BMU)	Sofia Orellana  PhD student Jointly supervised with Ed Bullmore (BMU)

Lidia Ripoll-Sanchez  PhD student Jointly supervised with William Schafer at the MRC LMB Research profile>>	Rachel Smith     PhD student Funded by an NIH-Cambridge scholarship	Will Snyder    PhD student Jointly supervised with Ed Bullmore (BMU) and funded by an NIH-Cambridge scholarship	Elise Chang MPhil student Jointly supervised with Susanna Mierau at the Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston, USA)

Alumni and additional affiliated students

• Margarita Samborskaia at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge – external advisor
• Elena Williams at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge – external advisor
• Cleo Valentine at the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge – external advisor
• Danyal Akarca at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge – external advisor
• Eva-Maria Stauffer at the Brain Mapping Unit, University of Cambridge  – second supervisor
• Sol Lim – alumnus – now postdoc at University of Cambridge

Selected publications

Váša F, Romero-Garcia R, Kitzbichler M, Seidlitz J, Whitaker K, …, Vertes PE*, Bullmore ET* (2020), “Conservative and disruptive modes of adolescent change in human brain functional connectivity.” PNAS 117 (6) 3248-3253

Romero-Garcia R, Seidlitz J, Whitaker KJ, Morgan SE, Fonagy P, Dolan RJ, Jones PB, …, Vértes PE*, Bullmore ET* (2020), “Schizotypy-related magnetization of cortex in healthy adolescence is colocated with expression of schizophrenia-related genes” Biological Psychiatry 88(3): 248-259

Etkin A*, Fonzo G*,Wu W*, Huemer J*, Patenaude B*, Vértes PE*, et al. (2019), “Using fMRI connectivity to define a treatment-resistant form of post-traumatic stress disorder” Science Translational Medicine 11 (486) eaal3236.

Morgan SE, Seidlitz J, Whitaker KJ, Romero-Garcia R, Clifton NE, Scarpazza C, van Amelsvoort T, Marcelis M, … , Vértes PE*, Bullmore ET*. (2019), “Cortical patterning of abnormal morphometric similarity in psychosis is associated with brain expression of schizophrenia-related genes.” PNAS 116 (19) 9604-9609.

Leday G*, Vértes PE*, Richardson S, Greene JR, Khan S, Henderson R, Freeman TC, Regan T, Pariante CM, Harrison NA, MRC Immunopsychiatry Consortium, Perry HV, Drevets WC, Wittenberg GM and Bullmore ET (2018), “Replicable and coupled changes in innate and adaptive immune gene expression in two case-control studies of blood microarrays in major depressive disorder” Biological Psychiatry 83 (1) 70-80.

Yan G*, Vértes PE*, Towlson EK*, Chew YL, Walker DS, Schafer WR, Barabási AL (2017), “Network control principles predict neuron function in the Caenorhabditis elegans connectome” Nature 550 (7677): 519-523

Whitaker KJ*, Vértes PE*, Romero-Garcia R, Váša F, Moutoussis M, Prabhu G, Weiskopf N, Callaghan MF, Wagstyl K, Rittman T, Tait R, Ooi C, Suckling J, Inkster B, Fonagy P, Dolan RJ, Jones PB, Goodyer IM, Bullmore ET, NSPN Consortium (2016), “Adolescence is associated with genomically patterned consolidation of the hubs of the human brain connectome.” PNAS 113 (32), 9105-9110

Bentley B, Branicky R, Barnes CL, Chew YL, Yemini E, Bullmore ET, Vértes PE*, Schafer WR* (2016), “The multilayer connectome of Caenorhabditis elegans” Plos Com Bio 12 (12) e1005283

Vértes PE, Alexander-Bloch AF, Gogtay N, Giedd JN, Rapoport JL, Bullmore ET (2012), “Simple models of human brain functional networks.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109(15):5868-73

Collaborative Landscape

We are an interdisciplinary group with a broad research programme. This is supported by strong collaborative ties across the world, and across many departments and institutes in Cambridge.