Mental Health & Neurodynamics explores how mathematical and cognitive approaches can help us better understand, prevent, and treat traumatic stress and intrusive memories. Working across psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, and mathematical biology, this research examines the mechanisms underlying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the dynamics of traumatic memory persistence.

Current work has focused on the development and analysis of a scalable digital intervention designed to reduce intrusive trauma memories in healthcare workers exposed to repeated traumatic events during the COVID-19 pandemic. In collaboration with researchers at Uppsala University, the University of Cambridge, and P1vital, the project investigated how a simple imagery-competing task involving mental rotation and computer gameplay could disrupt intrusive visual memories and reduce PTSD symptoms.

Recent work demonstrated how this approach can lead substantial reductions in intrusive memories and broader PTSD symptoms across a randomised clinical trial involving NHS healthcare workers. Mathematical and statistical modelling approaches highlight how memory vividness, reactivation, and intervention use interact to shape treatment outcomes, helping uncover the mechanisms that underpin trauma memory persistence and recovery.

This research combines mathematical modelling, neuroscience, and digital intervention design to explore how cognitive systems respond to trauma, and how scalable, low-intensity interventions may support mental health at population scale.