Prof Ian Hickie (USYD)

Bio

Professor Hickie is a Professor of Psychiatry and the Co-Director of Health and Policy, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. He has led major public health and health services developments in Australia, particularly focusing on early intervention for young people with depression, suicidal thoughts and behaviours and complex mood disorders. He is active in the development through codesign, implementation and continuous evaluation of new health information and personal monitoring technologies to drive highly-personalized and measurement-based care.

Circadian Depression: Testing a pathophysiological pathway to mood disorders

Abstract

Much of our everyday sense of well-being is driven by a well functioning 24-hour sleep-wake cycle, underpinned by the physiology of our body clock – or circadian system. Much progress has been made over the last two decades in unravelling the complex brain and body mechanisms that align the function of that clock with the external light-dark rhythms, and the changes in those rhythms that occur regularly across seasons and across the normal developmental life cycle. Our group at the Brain and Mind Centre actively investigates the ways in which dysfunction of those clock mechanisms may give rise to particular types of mood disorders characterized by low energy, prolonged sleep, weight gain and reduced motor activity. Of particular interest is the ways in which these states may also switch to an opposite phenotype of high energy, increased motor activity and low sleep. The importance of identifying these types of mood disorders, and designing specific behavioural and pharmacological approaches to care, will be discussed.