Philip Mosley

Email:: p.mosley@uq.edu.au

Background

Dr Philip Mosley studied at the University of Oxford and obtained a master’s degree in physiological sciences and a degree in medicine. He was also captain of the university boxing team and was awarded two full 'Blues'. He worked as a junior doctor in Manchester before moving to Australia to complete his specialist training in psychiatry, which he undertook at the Royal brisbane and Women's Hospital.

Dr Mosley is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry (RANZCP) and halso holds an advanced certificate in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. As part of his training, Dr Mosley undertook a 2-year neuropsychiatry fellowship at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) and the Asia-Pacific Centre for Neuromodulation (APCN), an active research entity of the Queensland Brain Institute.

Currently, Dr Mosley works as a specialist neuropsychiatrist in a deep brain stimulation team, runs a private neuropsychiatry practice and also provides a consultation-liaison psychiatry service to the neurology, medical and surgical wards of the general hospital. Dr Mosley's private practice is focussed on neurodegenerative disease, movement disorders and head injury.

Dr Mosley remains an active clinician-scientist with appointments at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and the Queensland Brain Institute. He completed his PhD in neuroscience in 2019 under the supervision of Professor Michael Breakspear. He published eleven peer-reviewed manuscripts from his thesis alone, and received the UQ Dean's Award for outstanding thesis.

Dr Mosley has been the chief investigator in a study of the neuropsychiatric effects of DBS for Parkinson’s disease, in a study of medicinal cannabis for Tourette’s syndrome, a lead investigator in a clinical trial of DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder and anorexia nervosa, as well as a clinical fellow in a neuroimaging study of Alzheimer’s disease. He has won prizes from the RANZCP in Old Age Psychiatry and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, and he has received research funding from the RBWH Foundation, the RANZCP Young Investigator Grant, Parkinson’s Queensland and Wesley Medical Research. Dr Mosley was awarded an ‘Advance Queensland’ Early Career Fellowship for his Parkinson's disease research and won the postgraduate medal from the Australian Society for Medical Research for findings arising from this project. In 2020, he won the Early Career Psychiatrist award from the RANZCP, which is presented to the fellow producing the most significant piece of research in the five years since fellowship. Currently Dr Mosley's research is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).

Availability

Dr Philip Mosley is:: Available for supervision

Fields of research

Biomedical and Clinical Sciences Clinical sciences Cognitive and computational psychology Neurosciences Psychology

Research impacts

Dr Mosley is one of the most experienced psychiatrists in the world with regards to the practice of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and has been embedded as a psychiatrist within a DBS service in Brisbane since 2013. Dr Mosley has improved the neuropsychiatric safety of DBS for Parkinson’s disease through individualised assessments of brain connectivity and stimulation field distribution. His rich dataset has been shared with European and US collaborators. During his PhD in neuroscience, Dr Mosley demarcated brain networks responsible for changes in mood after DBS and used mathematical modelling of human behaviour to discriminate those at risk of postoperative psychiatric complications. His work translates clinically to more accurate and effective use of neuromodulation, based on targeted recruitment of key neuronal pathways.

Applying these methods to treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder, Dr Mosley characterised a brain connectivity fingerprint associated with clinically-significant response to DBS. This was a landmark Australian trial (Reg. U1111-1146-0992), establishing DBS as a viable treatment option for those with intractable symptoms. Dr Mosley extended this work in a second trial, and then became one of the first clinical researchers in the world to adapt non-invasive deep brain ultrasound for OCD - using precisely-focussed, high-frequency sound wave energy, to change the activity of deep brain regions, without surgical ablation of brain tissue or the implantation of medical devices.Manuscripts from these trials are currently being peer-reviewed for publication in the scientific literature.

Completed Projects:

Defining brain networks mediating psychiatric symptoms after subthalamic deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.
Predictors of caregiver burden after subthalamic deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.
Psychological interventions for caregivers after subthalamic deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.
Deep brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens for severe, treatment-resistant, obsessive-compulsive disorder.
A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial of medicinal cannabis for Tourette's syndrome.
Neuroimaging biomarkers of early Alzheimer's disease.
7. Discriminating between melancholic and non-melancholic depression using analyses of facial expressivity and functional brain imaging.
8. Focussed ultrasound stimulation of the nucleus accumbens and the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala for severe iobsessive-compulsive disorder (manuscript under review)