Timothea Toulopoulou
Professor, Department of Psychology

Education

• Ph.D. in Neuropsychology, University of London, UK (2001)
• M.Sc. in Neurosciences, University of London, UK (1995)
• B.A. (Hons) in Social Sciences (Psychology), University of Sunderland, UK (1994)

Research

Prof. Toulopoulou’s lab conducts interdisciplinary work focused on understanding the cognitive, neurobiological, and genetic factors that influence an individual’s risk of developing mental illness or building resilience. The goal is to better understand brain mechanisms that increase vulnerability, which could lead to preventive strategies. For instance, insights into how cumulative genetic and environmental risks are embedded in the developing brain may pave the way for new treatments and interventions aimed at mitigating these risks.

Prof. Toulopoulou welcomes applications from talented prospective PhD students and postdoctoral researchers.

Selected Publications

Arslan, S., Kasikçi, M., Dag, O., Sahin-Çevik, D., Çakmak, I. B., Vassos, E., vanden Heuvel, M., & Toulopoulou, T. (2025). Multimodal prediction of psychotic-like experiences using elastic netmodeling: external validation in a clinical sample. Psychological Medicine.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291725102201

Atmaca-Turan, H., Sahin-Çevik, D., Çakar, S., Gökalp-Yavuz, F., van den Heuvel, M., Rijsdijk, F., Filbey,F., & Toulopoulou, T. (2025). The relationship between recreational cannabis use, psychotic-likeexperiences, and the salience network in adolescent and young adult twins. Psychological Medicine.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291725101773

Sahin-Ilikoglu, T., Ma, S., Kummerfeld, E., Rawls, E., Yang Tan, H., & Toulopoulou, T. (2025). Causaldiscovery analysis reveals insights into psychosis proneness, brain function, and environmentalfactors among young individuals. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2025.112015

Çabuk, T., Sevim, N., Mutlu, E., Yagcioglu, A. E. A., Koç, A., & Toulopoulou, T. (2024). Natural languageprocessing for defining linguistic features in schizophrenia: A sample from Turkish speakers.Schizophrenia Research, 266, 183–189.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2024.02.026

Toulopoulou, T., Zhang, X., Cherny, S. S., Dickinson, D., Berman, K., Straub, R., Sham, P., &Weinberger, D. (2019). Polygenic risk score increases schizophrenia liability through cognition-relevant pathways. Brain, 142, 471–485.

Toulopoulou, T., van Haren, N., Zhang, X., Sham, P. C., Cherny, S. S., Campbell, D. D., Picchioni, M.,Murray, R., Boomsma, D. I., Pol, H. H., Brouwer, R., Schnack, H., Fananas, L., Sauer, H., Nenadic, I.,Weisbrod, M., Cannon, T., & Kahn, R. (2015). Reciprocal causation models of cognitive vs volumetriccerebral intermediate phenotypes for schizophrenia in a pan-European twin cohort. MolecularPsychiatry, 20(11), 1386–1396.