Linda Katona

Dr Linda Katona is Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Funded Principal Investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland. Dr Katona is also an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford's Department of Pharmacology. Linda’s current research focuses on understanding the neuronal mechanisms including GABAergic signalling central to gut microbiota-brain interactions, their role in cognitive and mnemonic processing, and their importance in mental health. She leads a research group at the forefront of cellular and systems neuroscience interfacing with host-microbiome research building on an exclusive interdisciplinary approach she recently developed at UCC. Linda was born in Marosvásárhely, Romania where she studied Computer Engineering at the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (MEng). She then transitioned into Neuroscience with an MSc degree at the University of Oxford and a DPhil (PhD) in the MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Oxford testing the hypothesis that differences in connectivity and molecular composition across different hippocampal GABAergic interneuron types reflect the specialisation in their functions. She discovered that inhibition is periodic in space and time during behaviour. As a postdoc in the Department of Pharmacology and a Nicholas Kurti Junior Research Fellow in Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, she investigated how theta oscillations generated in subcortical brain areas are implemented in the cortex by identifying the contribution of distinct long-range projecting hippocampal GABAergic cell types to regulating network activity in vivo. Subsequently, she used combinatorial viral labelling strategies with optogenetics/chemogenetics and multi-unit electrophysiology to define how distinct medial septal GAB

Dr Katona's current research agenda aims to unravel causal mechanisms of body-brain interactions impacting on mental health – associations increasingly prevalent in neurological/psychiatric conditions. Work in her group is twofold: a) translational - to identify gut microbiome-responsive brain biomarkers of cognitive impairments relevant to schizophrenia in transgenic animal models; b) fundamental - to define neuronal mechanisms of vagus nerve-impact on higher order brain function at synaptic, cellular and systems level. This comes at a time when >1 billion people worldwide are living with functionally disabling brain disorders with imploding social, economic and environmental implications. Dr Katona's research maps to key global strategic objectives such as UN SDG3 (to ensure Good Health and Well-being) to tackle the growing challenges posed by brain disorders.