Professor Cynthia H.Y. Fu

Cynthia and her team has been studying the brain regions affected by depression and how they can change with treatment, revealing that there are common as well as distinct effects of antidepressant medication and talking therapies. Her research was the first to demonstrate that the pattern of neural activation during sad facial processing could accurately diagnose depression for an individual person and how the pattern of brain responses as well as morphological changes could help to predict how likely an individual patient will respond to psychological or pharmacological treatments.

Cynthia completed her specialist training in psychiatry at the University of Toronto where she was the Chief Resident at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health). With the support from a Wellcome Trust fellowship, she received her doctorate in neuroimaging from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. She was a Higher Education Funding Council of England Clinical Senior Lecturer and currently holds a personal Chair at the School of Psychology.

Cynthia is also an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in the Affective Disorders Service at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Affective Disorders, King's College London. 

Cynthia’s research focuses on the brain regions affected by depression, how they change with treatment with psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy, and whether we can predict clinical response before the start of treatment. Her research has direct translational potential and had led to primary publications in the development of biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis based on brain imaging.
Cynthia’s research is regularly cited in the top decile for influential publications in psychiatry and has received numerous awards, including the British Association for Psychopharmacology Award and from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (Brain & Behavior Research Foundation).