Contact information

Email
masud.husain@ndcn.ox.ac.uk

Phone
+44(0)1865 223875

PA
Jayne Bullock
pa@ndcn.ox.ac.uk

Website
http://www.masudhusain.org

Colleges

New College

Websites

Personal webpage
Personal webpage
Dementia Research Oxford
Oxford University webpage
Dementia Co-Theme Lead
NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford Health

Biography

Masud is Professor of Neurology & Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He co-leads the Dementia Theme of the Oxford Health NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and is Editor-in-Chief of Brain. Together with Cornelia van Duijn, he leads Dementia Research Oxford.

Between 2013-23 he held a Principal Fellowship at Oxford, awarded by The Wellcome Trust. He is a Professorial Fellow at New College. Previously he was Professor of Clinical Neurology at UCL & The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, London and Deputy Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Masud read Physiological Sciences / Medicine (1981-84) at Oxford before completing his PhD here in 1987. He held a Harkness Fellowship and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, prior to returning to Oxford to finish his clinical degree. After Neurology training in London, he held a joint appointment as Consultant Neurologist and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow (2000-12), first at Imperial College, then at UCL.

Awards

Winner, Royal Society Trivedi Best Science Book, 2025
CLARIVATE highly-cited researcher, 2025
Graham Bull Prize in Clinical Science, Royal College of Physicians London
Elizabeth Warrington Prize, British Neuropsychological Society.
Fellow of Academy of Medical Sciences
Fellow of American Academy of Neurology
Fellow of European Academy of Neurology

Masud Husain

FRS FRCP FMedSci FAAN FEAN MA DPhil BMBCh

Professor of Neurology & Cognitive Neuroscience

Professorial Fellow, New College
Co-lead, Dementia Theme, Oxford Health NIHR Biomedical Research Centre
Co-lead, Dementia Research Oxford
Editor-in-Chief, Brain

Memory and motivation in health and dementia

Research Summary

My research focuses on

Memory in healthy individuals and patients with memory disorders
Motivation and apathy in healthy people and patient groups

We're funded by The Wellcome Trust and the NIHR Oxford Health BRC.

We see patients in the Cognitive Disorders Clinic at the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, Dept of Experimental Psychology.

Our research on fundamental mechanisms underlying attention, working memory and motivated decision-making in healthy people is conducted in our research centres at the Dept of Experimental Psychology and the West Wing, John Radcliffe Hospital.

Masud's new book

Winner, Royal Society Trivedi Best Science Book, 2025 and a Financial Times, Times and Guardian Best Science Book, 2025

Recent publications

Remote digital cognitive assessment for aging and dementia using the Oxford Cognitive Testing Portal OCTAL

Zhao S. et al, (2026), Npj Digital Medicine, 9

The social dimension of apathy: evidence for a distinct domain from 11,243 individuals across health and neurocognitive disorders

Zhao S. et al, (2026), Translational Psychiatry, 16

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Contact information

Colleges

Websites

Biography

Awards

Masud Husain

Research Summary

Masud's new book

Key publications

The computational cost of active information sampling before decision-making under uncertainty

Cerebrovascular risk factors impact frontoparietal network integrity and executive function in healthy ageing

Neuroscience of apathy and anhedonia: A transdiagnostic approach

Changing concepts of working memory

Functional role of the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas

Dynamic shifts of limited working memory resources in human vision

Abnormal temporal dynamics of visual attention in spatial neglect patients

Recent publications

Remote digital cognitive assessment for aging and dementia using the Oxford Cognitive Testing Portal OCTAL

The social dimension of apathy: evidence for a distinct domain from 11,243 individuals across health and neurocognitive disorders

Evidence from multifeature whole-report in visual short-term memory suggests that not all misbinding is swapping

Working Memory Deficits in Hippocampal Amnesia are Associated with Apathy

Three ‘C words’

The significance of electrophysiological recordings from the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in humans

Neurochemical drivers of effort: The roles of dopamine and beyond in physical and cognitive exertion

The Relationship Between Sleep, Cognition, and Dementia Risk in People With Focal Epilepsy

Brain essay competition winner on artificial general intelligence

Dopamine Boosts Motivation for Prosocial Effort in Parkinson's Disease