Professor Essi Viding FBA

Developmental risk and resilience; cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of child and adolescent mental health; developmental risk for psychopathy.

Elected 2020

Fellow type
UK Fellow
Year elected
2020
Sections
Psychology

Essi Viding is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at University College London. Her major scientific contribution has been to use multiple methodologies, including behavioural genetic, neuroimaging, and experimental psychology methods to characterise the biology, environment and psychology of children at risk of developing persistent antisocial behaviour. She has shown that children with antisocial behaviour and callous-unemotional traits are a distinct, genetically vulnerable subgroup of those showing antisocial behaviour, with particular structural and functional abnormalities in brain areas involved in emotion processing and regulation. Her research has been critical in getting these children recognised in diagnostic schemes and has clear implications for individualising treatment approaches.

Current post

University College London Professor of Developmental Psychopathology

School of Medicine Child Study Center, Yale University Adjunct Faculty

Past appointments

University College London Reader

2008 - 2011

Top picks

Why do some people become psychopaths?

Video

Rosalind Franklin Lecture 2017 presented by Professor Essi Viding.

The Neuroscience of Psychopathy

Video

Interview with UCL's Essi Viding on the origins of psychopathy and antisocial behavior in the brain.

Essi Viding

Article

Interview by Virginia Gewin

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