Investigating the neuroscience of lifestyle interventions for mental health

This project is suitable for a PhD student.

Background

Our everyday behaviours, such as physical activity, sleep, diet, meditation, and social connections, have a potent impact on our mental health and the health of our brain. There is growing research to harness this power by developing lifestyle-based interventions for mental health and investigating how they do and don’t change the brain, and for whom they are most effective.

The Cognitive Fitness Laboratory recently completed two world-first longitudinal clinical trials using multi-modality neuroimaging:

1. The Brain Exercise Addiction Trial (BEAT Trial) – an NHMRC funded investigation into the capacity of physical exercise to reverse the brain harms caused by long-term heavy cannabis use (ClinTrials.gov Registry ID: NCT04902092: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04902092; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=19709&isClinicalTrial=True);

2. Conquering Compulsions (CC Trial)- investigating the capacity of physical exercise and meditation to alter reward processing and help people get better control of a wide range of unhelpful habits, from drinking and eating to cleaning (ClinTrials.gov Registry ID: NCT03067636; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03067636).

Aim

In this project, the PhD will explore the potential of lifestyle interventions for mental health across these two recently completed large-scale clinical trials. The PhD candidate will formulate hypotheses and test the effectiveness of lifestyle-based interventions to help people get better control of compulsive behaviours.