Dr Angharad de Cates BMBCh (Hons), DPhil, PGCert Higher Ed, MRCPsych, FHEA

Dr Angharad de Cates

School of Psychology
NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry

Angharad is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and an Honorary Member of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. Her main area of research involves investigating the neurocognitive underpinnings of depression and psychosis: how these affect the development and prognosis of mental illnesses, and how we can potentially modulate cognitive problems with treatments.

Qualifications

  • PhD Oxford
  • PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Oxford
  • MRCPsych
  • MSc Warwick
  • BMBCH (Hons) Oxford

Biography

Angharad qualified from the University of Oxford, and completed NIHR Academic Foundation and Academic Clinical Fellow posts at the University of Warwick. She then moved to Oxford to complete a Wellcome Trust funded DPhil (working on the first fMRI studies of medications that activate the 5HT4 receptor and how these might be useful for cognition), and subsequently a Guarantors of Brain Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship.

She has been supervised by Catherine Harmer, Phil Cowen and Susannah Murphy (DoP, Oxford), Thomas Nichols and Anya Topiwala (BDI, Oxford), Matthew Broome and Rachel Upthegrove (Birmingham) and Scott Weich (Sheffield).

She works clinically as an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist while continuing her research supported by the NIHR with a Clinical Lectureship.

Postgraduate supervision

Always available for discussions regarding potential postgraduate projects.

Research

Angharad’s research interests include neurocognition, self-harm and psychopharmacology across different mental illnesses - especially involving mood and psychotic disorders. Currently, she is particularly interested in investigating whether one group of new agents, which act as agonists at the 5-HT4 receptor, may work as antidepressants and / or improve cognition in humans using neuropsychological tasks and brain imaging.

Other activities

  • Section Editor, British Journal of Psychiatry
  • Higher Trainee Representative to the Royal College of Psychiatrists Psychopharmacology Committee
  • West Midlands ICAT West Midlands Clinical Lecturer Representative

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Gill, K, de Cates, A, Wiseman, C, Murphy, SE, Williams, E, Harmer, C, Morales-Munoz, I & Marwaha, S 2025, 'Nitrous oxide for the treatment of depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis', EBioMedicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.106023

Türkmen, C, Sacu, S, Furukawa, Y, de Cates, A, Schoevers, RA, Kamphuis, J, Chevance, A, Weisz, JR, Emslie, GJ, Strawn, JR, Hetrick, SE, Efthimiou, O, Salanti, G, van Dalfsen, JH, Furukawa, TA & Cipriani, A 2025, 'Side effect profile and comparative tolerability of newer generation antidepressants in the acute treatment of major depressive disorder in children and adolescents: protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis', BMJ open, vol. 15, no. 10, e102696. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2025-102696

de Cates, AN, Harmer, CJ, Harrison, PJ, Cowen, PJ, Emmanuel, A, Travis, S, Murphy, SE & Taquet, M 2024, 'Association between a selective 5-HT4 receptor agonist and incidence of major depressive disorder: emulated target trial', British Journal of Psychiatry , pp. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2024.97

Cates, AND, Mullin, D, Stirland, L, Costa, MPD & Tracy, D 2024, 'Breaking down barriers: promoting journals beyond the page with open access journal clubs', BJPsych Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2024.3

Agarwal, A, Mehta, P, Jacobson, T, Shah, NS, Ye, J, Zhu, J, Wafford, QE, Bahiru, E, Cates, AND, Ebrahim, S, Prabhakaran, D, Rodgers, A & Huffman, MD 2024, 'Fixed-dose combination therapy for the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease', Nature Medicine, vol. 30, pp. 1199–1209. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02896-w

Martens, MAG, Wright, LC, Gibson, D, Spitz, G, van Praag, CDG, Suri, S, Cowen, PJ, Murphy, SE, Harmer, CJ & de Cates, A 2023, '5-HT4 Receptor Agonist Effects on Functional Connectivity in the Human Brain: Implications for Procognitive Action', Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 1124-1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.03.014

Pitman, A, Lowther, M, Pike, A, Davies, J, Buckman, JEJ, Robinson, O & de Cates, A 2023, 'The influence of peer non-suicidal self-harm on young adults' urges to self-harm: experimental study', Acta Neuropsychiatrica. https://doi.org/10.1017/neu.2023.51

Lane, V, Turner, E & de Cates, A 2022, 'The core trainee ‘residential’: an opportunity for trainees to feel connected in a world of virtual teaching', BJPsych Bulletin, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 336-341. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2021.61

Martens, MAG, Wright, LC, van Praag, CDG, Capitao, LP, Gibson, D, Cowen, PJ, Harmer, CJ, Murphy, SE & de Cates, A 2022, 'The Effect of the 5-HT4 Agonist, Prucalopride, on a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Faces Task in the Healthy Human Brain', Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 13, 859123. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.859123

de Cates, A, Wright, LC, Martens, MAG, Gibson, D, Türkmen, C, Filippini, N, Cowen, PJ, Harmer, CJ & Murphy, SE 2021, 'Déjà-vu? Neural and behavioural effects of the 5-HT4 receptor agonist, prucalopride, in a hippocampal-dependent memory task', Translational Psychiatry, vol. 11, 497 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01568-4

Comment/debate

Agarwal, A, Mehta, PM, Jacobson, T, Shah, NS, Ye, J, Zhu, J, Wafford, QE, Bahiru, E, de Cates, AN, Ebrahim, S, Prabhakaran, D, Rodgers, A & Huffman, MD 2024, 'Author Correction: Fixed-dose combination therapy for the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease', Nature Medicine, vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 2371-2371. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03128-x

Editorial

Malhi, GS, Adlington, K, Al-Diwani, A, Ali, S, Arya, R, Baldwin, DS, Batley, P, Bell, E, Berrios, G, Beveridge, A, Bhat, M, Bhugra, D, Biswas, A, Byford, S, Campbell, C, Cass, H, Chadda, RK, Chamberlain, SR, Chevance, A, Comasco, E, Cookson, J, Costello, H, Critchley, HD, Cuijpers, P, de Cates, AN, De Giorgi, R, de Oliveira, C, Drummond, C, Feng, J, Ford, T, Forrester, A, Geddes, JR, Harrison, JR, Hayes, JF, Henderson, S, Ho, CSH, Homan, P, Horn, N, Ioannidis, K, Jones, E, Karyotaki, E, Kaufman, KR, Koychev, I, Kumari, V, Kyriakopoulos, M, Lawrie, SM, Lee, W, Lovik, A, McGuire, P, McKenzie, K, Ostinelli, EG, Oyebode, F, Peters, S, Petkova, E, Phillips, MR, Pinto da Costa, M, Reilly, TJ, Roberts, E, Rodda, J, Rush, AJ, Saunders, R, Schulze, TG, Schultze-Lutter, F, Shergill, SS, Shivakumar, G, Siskind, D, Soomro, GM, Srinivasan, R, Sumathipala, A, Szymaniak, K, Tan, E, Tarokh, L, Tracy, D, Watson, S, Williams, R, Wu, J, Young, AH, Zisman-Ilani, Y & Fernandez-Egea, E 2025, 'The value of mental science: we publish what matters', British Journal of Psychiatry , vol. 227, no. 1, pp. 429-433. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2025.118

Preprint

de Cates, AN, Gillespie, AL, Scaife, J, Martens, MAG, Carson, J, Godlewska, B, Howard, W, Guru, A, Cowen, PJ, Harmer, CJ & Murphy, SE 2025 'Effects on hippocampal activity following 5-HT4 receptor agonism in unmedicated patients with depression: the RESTAND study' medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.29.25333049

Review article

Türkmen, C, Machunze, N, Lee, AM, Bougelet, E, Ludin, NM, de Cates, AN, Vollstädt-Klein, S, Bach, P, Kiefer, F, Burdzovic Andreas, J, Kamphuis, J, Schoevers, RA, Emslie, GJ, Hetrick, SE, Viechtbauer, W & van Dalfsen, JH 2025, 'Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: The Association Between Newer-Generation Antidepressants and Insomnia in Children and Adolescents With Major Depressive Disorder', Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2025.01.006

Durdurak, BB, Morales Munoz, I, de Cates, A, Wiseman, CE, Broome, MR & Marwaha, S 2025, 'Underlying biological mechanisms of emotion dysregulation in Bipolar Disorder', Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 16, 1552992. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1552992

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