Profile – Dr Akshay Nair

Name:

Dr Akshay Nair

Job Title:

Wolfson Clinical Fellow

Place of work / study:

Huntington’s disease centre, UCL Institute of Neurology

Area of research:

Neuropsychiatric symptoms in Huntington’s disease

How is your work funded?

Leonard Wolfson Foundation and Wellcome Trust

Tell us a little about yourself:            

I am a psychiatrist interested in the neurobiological basis of psychiatric symptoms and disorders. Currently I am a Leonard Wolfson Fellow at UCL and am also the clinical lead in the HD Neuropsychiatric Service at UCLH. Before I moved to UCL I was at King’s College where I did my psychiatric core training, my exams and some research in Alzheimer’s disease and Schizophrenia. I went to medical school in Oxford and grew in Gloucester.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself:           

I’ve been really getting into photography lately – so follow me on Instagram @akshaysphotos

Why did you choose to work in dementia?

The psychiatric features of dementia, such as irritability or apathy, are often some of the most disabling and upsetting parts of the illness. Despite this they are poorly understood and the treatments for these symptoms is very limited. I also hope that by studying psychiatric symptoms in dementia we can better understand these symptoms in other disorders like – in patients with schizophrenia for example. Currently my work is focused on apathy – the loss of motivation. I am studying apathy in Huntington’s disease using a variety of approaches including computational modelling of behaviour and brain imaging.

Follow @_a_nair