Anxiety and Dizziness have a long-known but little understood association. Dizziness features in the diagnostic criteria list for anxiety (DSM-IV and ICD-10 item 9), and in turn anxiety is present in >30% of vestibular outpatients. The condition where this association is strongest is Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD), where debilitating dizziness, anxiety and experiences of ‘overload’ are caused by environments with high visual intensity and/or visual motion, such as supermarkets, crowds, motion on screens or even walking across a patterned floor. PPPD has highly varied rehabilitation success with some patients improving in a few weeks and others hardly improving over many years, and it is entirely unknown why this should be. The rehabilitation approach is systematic visual desensitisation, according to a broad theory of down-weighting visual signals that trigger sensory overload, but the mechanisms underlying overload and its plasticity/rehabilitation remain hypothetical.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Please contact Dr Georgie Powell, [email protected] for further information about this project.

Over the next 5 years the Neuroscience and Mental Health Innovation Institute will offer 18 3-year PhD scholarships through the Hodge PhD Scholarship Programme sponsored by The Hodge Foundation. The overarching theme for all our projects is neuroplasticity and neuroimmunology of brain disorders relevant to mental health. A key aim of the Scholarship Programme is to train and nurture the brightest researchers in the skills needed to address the complex problem of treating brain disorders related to mental health. To meet this strategic aim each project will have a link with a key non-academic external partner, so that our PhD students have a bespoke opportunity to learn about the challenges of translating their research findings into impact beyond academia. Each studentship will cover tuition fees, a stipend at the UKRI rate, and consumables and other resource costs of the project. This project is one of 6 studentships that the Scholarship Programme will fund beginning in October 2023.

Application forms and further information about applying to the Hodge PhD Scholarship Programme can be obtained from [email protected].

Competed application forms must be sent to [email protected].

Only one form will be considered per applicant. You can select up to 2 projects funded by the Hodge PhD Scholarship Programme in one application form. 

Home applicants are eligible to apply for projects.