Professor Jeff Dalley
- Head of Department
- Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience (jointly with the Department of Psychiatry)
- Director of Studies in Neuroscience and Psychology, St Catharine’s College
- jwd20[at]cam.ac.uk
About
Educated in New Zealand, Jeff Dalley completed a PhD in the Department of Pharmacology at University College London (1992). Following post-doctoral positions in the labs of Professor Clare Stanford (UCL) and Professor David Nutt (Bristol), JD moved to Cambridge in 1996 to work with Trevor Robbins. He was appointed to the position of Rosalie Canney Lecturer in Psychology and Medicine in 2007, a cross-school appointment held jointly in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Psychiatry. He was promoted to G12 Professor in 2016 and is currently the Head of the Department of Psychology. In 2007, Professor Dalley joined St Catharine's College as a Fellow and Director of Studies in Psychology and Neuroscience.
Research
Primary research interests include behavioural and cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology and neuromodulation of limbic cortico-striatal brain circuitry. Specific interests include behavioural and neurobiological endophenotypes and their translational application to psychiatric disorders, including ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. My present research involves: (1) understanding the mechanistic involvement of noradrenaline and serotonin in how the brain processes and learns from uncertain information; (2) inhibitory microcircuits underlying visual perceptual learning; (3) novel cellular and molecular mechanisms contributing to top-down cognitive control of stress, extending to mitochondrial signalling in the prefrontal cortex; (4) understanding the genetic, neurodevelopmental and neurobiological bases of individual differences in behaviour, particularly in relation to pre-disposition to drug abuse and addiction. Experimental approaches include behavioural and cognitive methodologies, in-vivo fibre photometry, intra-cerebral and systemic pharmacology, targeted neural and neurochemical brain lesions, spatial transcriptomics, in-vivo neurophysiology, immunohistochemistry, high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging.
PBS 1A, 1B, II; NST 1B. Lectures on Motivation, Addiction; Stress, Systems-level Neuroscience; Neuropharmacology; Neurotransmission; Brain Imaging. Supervises NST 1B Neurobiology, MVST 1B Neurobiology and Animal Behaviour, PBS Part II PBS10.
