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A PhD neuroscience student at The University of Western Australia has won a prestigious international scholarship to Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

Nathanael Yates, from Belmont, has been awarded a United Kingdom Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan Split-Site Scholarship, which will cover all fees and living expenses during 12 months' research to be undertaken at St Peter's College, Oxford.  He has already moved to the UK to continue his research, which will count towards his UWA PhD.

Mr Yates began his PhD research project in February this year, through the School of Animal Biology with co-supervision from the Schools of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences and Medicine and Pharmacology.  His project is examining biomarkers in schizophrenia in relation to behaviour, neurophysiology and cognition.

"Sleep disturbance is common across almost all psychiatric disease, though the exact disturbance appears to be unique between each illness creating perhaps a unique signature for the illness," he said.

"Sleep also tends to improve with treatment, making it a useful indicator of how successful a treatment is and how treatment is progressing."

Mr Yates said his research had revealed that sleep deprivation was potentially protective against negative memory formation in healthy volunteers.

"If this is true this has potential implications in treatment of victims of trauma and those with mood disorders," he said. "It would appear that the advice to ‘sleep it off' after a traumatic experience may in fact lead to poorer outcomes because sleep helps reinforce those negative memories.

"Instead of looking at healthy volunteers I will be looking at people with relatives with a mood disorder, to see if this effect explains how sleep deprivation therapy works and whether sleep deprivation is in fact a useful preventative measure after emotional trauma."

The Commonwealth Scholarships in the United Kingdom program is funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, enabling students from Commonwealth countries to pursue advanced academic study in the UK.

Media references

Nathanael Yates
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716