BAP Council Member Details
Council Member: Professor Val Curran, PhD
UCL. v.curran@ucl.ac.uk
Council Member until 2012
Professor Curran’s interests span across a wide area of psychopharmacology. Her research is in human experimental, cognitive and clinical psychopharmacology and currently has 4 main foci: 1) transitions from substance use to misuse to addiction to recovery and relapse; 2) neurochemical bases of psychotic symptoms; 3) the differential effects of various cannabinoids upon cognitive, emotional and dependence-related processing; 4) the short- and long-term effects of 'recreational' drugs such as MDMA, cannabis, stimulants and ketamine on cognition, emotion and the brain.
Professor Curran was an undergraduate at Cambridge, completed her PhD at London University and later qualified as a Clinical Psychologist. She went from Research Fellow through to Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry from 1984-1995 and since then has worked at UCL. Professor Curran set up the UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit in 1996 and was appointed Professor of Psychopharmacology in 2000. She is also Research Lead at the Substance Misuse Services at the local Mental Health NHS Trust and a member of UCL Institutes of Cognitive Neuroscience and Behavioural Neuroscience. She has been a Principal Editor of Psychopharmacology since 2003.
Professor Curran has been a member of the BAP for decades and attended nearly every summer meeting. She sees the BAP as a national treasure which encourages constructive interaction between pre-clinical and clinical researchers. As a mentor to several young psychopharmacologists, Professor Curran particularly appreciates the forum it provides for undergraduates, PhDs and post-docs to present and discuss their work.
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- InVivoStat Statistical Analysis on
23rd August 2010
New BAP Education web page describing InVivoStat: The Statistical Tool for all Psychopharmacologists. Click here to read more InVivoStat - Information for the Public on
4th August 2010
We are pleased to launch our Public Web Pages. These are intended for members of the public with an interest in psychopharmacology. Public Web Page - Review of Mental Health Research on
5th July 2010
In 2009, BAP contributed to the Medical Research Council’s Review of Mental Health Research. The Report has recently been published. A summary report may be found here; MRC Mental Health Research Summary Report. Professor Barbara Sahakian, who will become BAP President-elect later this month, has written an article in the Lancet “A UK strategy for mental health and wellbeing”, also available here; Lancet article