The Thinking Mind Podcast: Psychiatry & Psychotherapy E161 | How do Psychedelics Help with Depression? (Professor Emma Robinson)
Feb 5, 2026
Professor Emma Robinson, a psychopharmacology professor who studies emotional brain biology using rodent models. She discusses how animal research translates human affective measures into tasks, what rapid-acting antidepressants like ketamine and psilocybin do to biases and memories, and why brain network plasticity and improved lab welfare matter for valid results.
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From Screens To Mechanisms
- Animal models evolved from simple drug screens to tools for understanding mechanisms of emotional behaviour in the brain.
- This shift aims to find targeted, rapid-acting antidepressant mechanisms rather than just screening for drugs that mimic existing ones.
Affective Bias As A Translational Marker
- Affective biases are measurable psychological processes present in humans and rats and serve as translational biomarkers for depression.
- Measuring how mood skews memory and choice lets researchers compare drug effects across species objectively.
Training Rats With Digging Substrates
- Robinson describes training rats to associate digging substrates with rewards to create positive or negative affective memories.
- Rats then show a small but reliable choice bias mirroring human memory biases of about 5–15%.