Chris Morris, PhD

I am a member of the Translational and Clinical Research Institute at the Edwardson Building where we have a group looking at clinical presentation in neurodegenerative disorders with a focus on Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). We use a variety of methods to identify what brain regions are involved in the core symptoms of DLB such as visual hallucinations, depression, and fluctuating cognition, including RNA sequencing based approaches. We have recently identified that dopamine loss may be a greater driver of depressive symptoms in DLB than serotonin using morphological and neuroanatomical methods.

I am Scientific Director of the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource, one of Europe’s largest post mortem brain tissue banks, where we characterise brain tissue from a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and DLB, along with healthy normal control donor tissue. These tissue samples are available globally and contribute to the GP2 project.

I am additionally a member of the Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases Group as part of the Mental Health, Dementia and Neurodegeneration theme at Newcastle. The group aims to gain a deeper understanding of the biology of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, with a view to identifying causes and treatments.