University of Melbourne
Murat is the Head of the Impulsive-Compulsive Behaviour Group at Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre and the Research Leader of Neuroimaging, Orygen Youth Health Research Centre.
The ability to exercise voluntary control over one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions is an essential component of daily life. The importance of self-regulation becomes especially clear when considering some potential consequences of not exercising enough of it. Repeated failures of self-regulation or an inability to resist a thought, temptation or impulse can lead to “compulsive” and “impulsive” behaviours that relate to a host of personal and social problems (e.g., excessive eating and internet usage, pathological gambling, substance abuse etc). Such Impulsive and Compulsive behaviours are extremely common in the general population and can be viewed as existing on a continuum ranging from mild, harmless thoughts and behaviours to severely debilitating symptoms and disorders.
Using the latest brain imaging, as well as cognitive and affective neuroscience techniques, we are investigating how brain networks mature through the life-span and how disruptions to them can lead to the maladaptive impulsive and compulsive behaviours often observed in neuropsychiatric, addictive personality and developmental disorders.