Anne Lingford-Hughes

Professor Anne Lingford-Hughes has been Professor of Addiction Biology at Imperial College London since 2009. She is also a Consultant Psychiatrist at Central North West London NHS Foundation Trust and has a particular interest in treatment of alcohol problems and comorbidity with appropriate medication. She graduated in medicine from Oxford University, completed her PhD at Cambridge University and trained in psychiatry at The Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals and Institute of Psychiatry, London. Her research has focused on the impact of drugs of abuse, particularly alcohol, on the brain using imaging, challenges with drugs and tasks probing brain function. She has expertise in what happens to the brain on taking drugs of abuse and what may make someone vulnerable to problems. She is currently using such techniques to study vulnerabilities to relapse in alcohol, heroin and cocaine addiction. She has also begun to investigate the brain in people with severe gambling problems since they have many similarities to those with other addictions but without the potential damage from drug or alcohol. To improve treatment of addiction using medication in the clinic, Professor Lingford-Hughes has also contributed to NICE guidance and led guidelines from the British Association for Psychopharmacology. She is a member of Medical Research Council’s Clinical training and career development panel and is vice-Chair of the Academic Faculty of RCPsych. Through these organisations she works to develop academic training and research experience for psychiatrists.