Group leader: Torbjørn Elvsåshagen, MD., PhD, senior consultant at the Department of Neurology, OUH, researcher at the Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research, OUH, and professor II at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, UiO 

Research profile and aims:

The research group conducts research in the fields of adult brain plasticity and neuropsychiatry. Plasticity – the capacity for change – is increasingly recognized as an intrinsic property of the adult brain and may play important roles in the etiologies and treatments of neurological and psychiatric illnesses. 

Neuropsychiatry recognizes that the brain and mind are one, that mental illnesses are disorders of the brain, and that psychiatric symptoms are commonly found in neurological disorders. One important goal of neuropsychiatric research is to bridge the gap between neurology and psychiatry. 

Among the main aims of our current research are: 

• To examine whether structural and functional brain plasticity are core characteristics of the human sleep-wake cycle 
• To increase our understanding of how novel schizophrenia- and bipolar disorder-associated genetic variants affect synaptic function and plasticity 
• To examine the role of brainstem and thalamus regions in neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders