Saleh, Dr Youssuf

Academic background

I completed my medical degree at Imperial College School of Medicine in 2015 with distinction. I have since undergone all of my clinical academic training at the Oxford University hospitals including as an academic foundation trainee (2015-2017), DPhil student and clinical research fellow (2018-2021), Academic Clinical Fellow (2022-2023), and Clinical Lecturer in Neurology (2023-current). My current role as a clinical lecturer involves a 50/50 split between clinical duties as a neurology registrar and a post-doctorate scientist based between Professor Masud Husain (Cognitive Neurology lab) and Prof. Sanjay Manohar (Computation Neurology Lab).

Teaching

Undergraduate: Experimental Psychology, Biomedical Sciences, Medicine

Graduate: Medicine

I am passionate about teaching the next generation of scientists/clinicians and have been involved as a tutor in multiple capacities including as a BMS tutor on the cognitive neurology course, a clinical tutor on the brain and behaviour course. I have a PgCert (With distinction) in teaching and higher learning from the Oxford Learning Institute. I look forward to carrying this forward in my current role as a lecturer in psychology.

Research interests

My DPhil Thesis investigated the mechanisms of clinical apathy, which is a debilitating disorder of motivation that is common across neurological and psychiatric disorders. This involved a transdiagnostic (i.e. across clinical disorders) investigation of apathy using a combination of magnetic resonance imaging, digital behavioural tasks, and brain stimulation techniques.

My current work has investigated the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the pathophysiology of apathy in Parkinson’s disease (PD) using a novel digital behavioural paradigm completed On and Off dopaminergic therapy. The digital paradigms aim to probe the psychological constructs of motivational persistence, or Grit, in people with apathy to better understand whether deficits in these constructs are characteristic of apathy. Doing so can help us better understand this syndrome better and lay down foundations for therapies, including cognitive, pharmacological, and brain stimulation approaches. I am happy to consider applications from students wanting to be involved in our research for their B.Sc. and/or Master’s projects.

Recent Publications

Full list Can be found here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&hl=en&user=zjgwvv8AAAAJ&sortby=pubdate

Key Publications:

1. Saleh Y1*, Le Heron C1, Petitet P et al. Apathy in small vessel cerebrovascular disease is associated with deficits in effort-based decision making. Brain. 2021 May 7;144(4):1247-1262. PMID: 33734344. (Joint first author).

2. Saleh Y*, Jarratt-Barnham I, Petitet P, et al. Negative symptoms and cognitive impairment are associated with distinct motivational deficits in treatment resistant schizophrenia. Mol Psychiatry. 2023 Nov;28(11):4831-4841. PMID: 37626135.

3. Saleh Y*, Jarratt-Barnham I, Fernandez-Egea E, et al. Mechanisms Underlying Motivational Dysfunction in schizophrenia. Front Behav Neurosci. 2021 Sep 10;15:709753. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.709753. PMID: 34566594.

4. Drew DS, Muhammed K, Baig F, Kelly M, Saleh Y, et al. Dopamine, and reward hypersensitivity in Parkinson’s disease with impulse control disorder. Brain. 2020 Aug 1;143(8):2502-2518. PMID: 32761061.

Recent publications:

5. Jarratt Barnham I, Saleh Y, Hussain M, et al. The influence of reward sensitivity on weight in treatment-resistant chronic schizophrenia. Span J Psychiatry Ment Health. 2024 PMID: 38331322.

6. Dalléry R, Saleh Y, Manohar S, et al. Persistence of effort in apathy. Rev Neurol (Paris). 2023 Dec;179(10):1047-1060. doi: 10.1016/j.neurol.2023.03.017. Epub 2023 Jul 12. PMID: 37451928.

7. Nobis L, Maio MR, Saleh Y, et al. Role of serotonin in modulation of decision-making in Parkinson’s disease. Journal of Psychopharmacology. 2023;37(4):420-431. PMID: 36628992.

8. Saleh, Y*., Piper, R., Richard, M., et al. (2022). Designing a 3D Printed Model of the Skull-Base: A Collaboration Between Clinicians and Industry. Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development, 9. PMID: 35280123.

9. Bahaaeddin Attaallah, Pierre Petitet, Elista Slavkova, et al. (2022) Hyperreactivity to uncertainty is a key feature of subjective cognitive impairment eLife 11:e75834. PMID: 35536752.

10. Tabi YA, Maio MR, Attaallah B, et al. Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire scores and their relationship to visual short-term memory performance. Cortex. 2022 Jan;146:186-199. PMID: 34894605.

Other publications:

11. Jarratt-Barnham I1, Saleh Y1, Husain M, et al. The influence of negative and affective symptoms on anhedonia self-report in schizophrenia. Compr Psychiatry. Published online January 25, 2020. PMID: 32007758. (Joint first author)

12. Saleh Y*, Marcus HJ, Iorga R, et al. Bedside saccadometry as an objective and quantitative measure of hemisphere-specific neurological function in patients undergoing cranial surgery. J Clin Neurosci. 2015;22(2):280-285. PMID: 25282394.

13. Li K, Russell C, Balaji N, Saleh Y, et al. The effects of motivational reward on the pathological attentional blink following right hemisphere stroke. Neuropsychologia. 2016 Nov;92:190-196. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.03.037. Epub 2016 Apr 6. PMID: 27060505.

14. Saleh Y*, Fowler AJ, Agha RA. Are non-melanoma skin cancer incomplete excision rates different between grades of plastic surgeons: the way forward? J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg. 2013 Nov;66(11):e346-7. Epub 2013 Jul 2. PMID: 23827443

Book chapters:

1. Saleh Y* and Husain M, Apathy and Impulsivity in neurology and psychiatry, Handbook of Behaviuoral Neuroscience, 2025.