
Dr Johan Alsio
MSc, PhD
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Current positions
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Research interests
The beneficial effects of drug treatment for psychiatric disorders often vary substantially between patients – a given medicine might alleviate symptoms in some patients but not in others. Meanwhile, some symptoms are resistant to current drug treatments; examples include the cognitive symptoms (e.g. cognitive inflexibility, impaired attention) and to a large extent the negative symptoms (e.g. low mood, lack of motivation) associated with schizophrenia. At the same time, many of the currently prescribed drugs are linked to frequent and sometimes severe adverse effects, making the pharmacological intervention in psychiatric disorders a balancing act between positive and negative outcomes. In my research group, we are interested in shifting this balance towards the positive, by studying the mechanisms underlying both therapeutic and adverse effects of drugs and perhaps identify drugs that produce less adverse effects while the therapeutic effects are maintained or even refined. This will ultimately improve the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
We approach this using translationally relevant behavioural tasks for cognition (e.g. reversal learning for cognitive flexibility and a sustained attention task) as well as motivation (effort discounting and progressive ratio). We combine such tasks with neural measurements using fibre photometry to gain further understanding of e.g. neurotransmitter dynamics and how this is impacted by drug treatment. In collaboration with Prof. Eamonn Kelly also at the School of Physiology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience, we use BRET to further understand the mechanisms involved in receptor pharmacology, with a particular emphasis on chemicals that display a functional bias, that is preferentially blocks one intracellular signalling pathway (e.g. β-arrestin signalling) while stimulating another (e.g. G proteins).
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
New translational tools for the study of negative symptoms in schizophrenia
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Physiology, Pharmacology & NeuroscienceDates
01/03/2024 to 31/08/2025
Publications
Recent publications
10/04/20245-HT 2A and 5-HT 2C receptor antagonism differentially modulate reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility
Psychopharmacology
Comparable roles for serotonin in rats and humans for computations underlying flexible decision-making
Neuropsychopharmacology
Chemogenetics identifies separate area 25 brain circuits involved in anhedonia and anxiety in marmosets
Science Translational Medicine
Serotonergic Innervations of the Orbitofrontal and Medial-prefrontal Cortices are Differentially Involved in Visual Discrimination and Reversal Learning in Rats
Cerebral Cortex
Dissociable and Paradoxical Roles of Rat Medial and Lateral Orbitofrontal Cortex in Visual Serial Reversal Learning
Cerebral Cortex