Associate Professor Nicholas Allen

BSc(Hons), MSc, PhD, MAPS. 

Associate Professor
Principal Research Fellow

Contact details:

What is depression? How can we tell the difference between normal depressed moods and clinical depression? How does being depressed affect the way a person processes and responds to emotional and social situations? Why are teenagers much more likely to suffer from depression than children? Why are some people more vulnerable to depression than others? Can we prevent depression from occurring, or prevent it from coming back? These are some of the questions that drive my research program. To answer them I use a combination of basic science and clinical science strategies.

For example, in my lab we use psychophysiological techniques to understand how emotion, attention, and social cognition are affected by depressed states and vulnerability to depression. Recently we have also begun to use structural and functional neuroimaging to better understand the role of the brain in these processes. I also head up a large longitudinal study of adolescent development and the emergence of emotional and behavioural problems with colleagues at the ORYGEN Research Centre, the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre and the Department of Psychology. In the clinical arena we are investigating the role of cognitive and emotional processes in recovery and relapse in depressed adolescents, and the effectiveness of innovative interventions (such as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) in early intervention and relapse prevention with adolescents.

Research Interests:

• Behavioural Neuroscience
• Affective and social neuroscience
• Psychophysiology and neurobiology of emotion, attention and temperament
• Clinical Psychology
• Psychological and biological models of affective disorders
• Causes of the emergence of affective disorders during adolescence
• Early intervention and prevention of affective disorders
• Evolutionary bases of emotion and psychopathology
• Cognitive therapy
• Developmental Psychology
• Adolescent brain and behavioural development
• Family processes in adolescent development and risk for depression

• Affective Neuroscience Lab

Professional Associations, Memberships & Awards:

• Australian Psychological Society
• American Psychological Association
• Society for Psychophysiological Research
• Society for Research in Psychopathology
• Registered Clinical Psychologist, Victoria, Australia
• International Society for Research on Emotions

Recent Funded Research:

Selected Publications:

Book chapters:

Badcock, P.B.T. & Allen N.B. (2007) Evolution, social cognition, and depressed mood: Exploring the relationship between depressed mood and social risk taking. In Forgas, J.P., Haselton, M.G., von Hippel, W. (eds.) Evolution and the Social mind: Evolutionary psychology and social cognition.  New York: Psychology Press.

Allen, N.B., Barrett, A., Sheeber, L., & Davis, B. (2006). Pubertal development and the emergence of the gender gap in mood disorders: A developmental and evolutionary synthesis. In D. Castle, J. Kulkarni & K. Abel (Eds.) Mood and anxiety disorders in women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Allen, N.B. (2006). Cognitive psychotherapy. In S. Bloch (Ed.) An introduction to the psychotherapies. (4th Edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Refereed Journal Articles:

Whittle, S., Yap, M.B.H., Yucel, M., Fornito, A., Barrett, A., Sheeber, L., & Allen, N.B. (2008). Prefrontal and amygdala volumes are related to adolescents’ affective behaviors during parent adolescent interactions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (9), 3652-3657.

Kettle, J., O’Brien-Simpson, L. & Allen, N.B. (2008). Impaired theory of mind in first-episode psychosis: comparison with community, university and depressed controls. Schizophrenia Research, 99, 96-102.

Davey,C.D., Yucel, M. & Allen, N.B. (2008). The emergence of depression in adolescence: Development of the prefrontal cortex and the representation of reward. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 32, 1-19.

Olino, T., Pettit, J., Klein, D., Allen, N., Seeley, J. & Lewinsohn, P. (2008). Influence of parental and grandparental Major Depressive Disorder on behavior problems early childhood: A three generation study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 47, 53-60.

Allen, N.B., Hetrick, S., Simmons, J. & Hickie, I. (2007). Early intervention for depressive disorders in young people: The opportunity and the (lack of) evidence. Medical Journal of Australia,187(7), S15-S17 .

Yap, M.B.H., Allen, N.B., & Sheeber, L. (2007). Using an emotion regulation framework to understand the role of temperament and family processes in risk for adolescent depressive disorders. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 10 (2), 180-196.

Lubman, D.I., Allen, N.B., Peters, L.A .& Deakin, J.F.W. (2007). Electrophysiological evidence of the motivational salience of drug cues in opiate addiction. Psychological Medicine; 37, 1203-1210.

Kettle, J., Andrewes, D. & Allen, N.B. (2006). Lateralization of the startle reflex circuit in humans: An examination with monaural probes following unilateral temporal lobe resection. Behavioral Neuroscience, 120, 24-39.

Whittle, S., Allen, N.B., Lubman, D., & Yucel, M. (2006). The neuroanatomical basis of affective temperament: Towards a better understanding of psychopathology. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 30, 511-525.

Allen, N.B., Semedar, A. & Haslam, N. (2005). Relationship patterns associated with dimensions of vulnerability to psychopathology. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 29, 737-750.

Allen, N.B., & Badcock, P.B.T. (2003). The social risk hypothesis of depressed mood: Evolutionary, psychosocial, and neurobiological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 887-913 .

Sheeber, L., Allen, N.B., Davis, B., & Sorensen, E. (2000). Regulation of negative affect during mother-child problem solving interactions: Adolescent depressive status and family processes. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 28, 467-479.

Lewinsohn, P.M., Allen, N.B., Seeley, J.R., & Gotlib, I.H. (1999). First onset versus recurrence of depression: Differential processes of psychosocial risk. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 483-489

ResearchStudents under Supervision:

PhD Theses in Progress

• Anna Barrett  (Co-supervised with Murat Yucel)
  Meg Dennison
  Yvonne Groot
  Alison Hunter (Co-supervised with Paul Dudgeon)
  Renee Lichter (Co-supervised with Paul Dudgeon)
  Laurie O'Brien-Simpson
  Orli Schwartz
  Julian Simmons
  Ian Williams (Co-supervised with Lyndal Bond)

Doctor of Psychology Theses in Progress

• Trudi MacKenzie
  Kim Roffel
  Anne Wollner