Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Holmes' field within psychology is experimental psychopathology in the areas of memory and emotion.
- Under the umbrella of "mental health science", her interdisciplinary research places cognitive science alongside clinical psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience for psychological treatment innovation. Work in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and bipolar disorder is linked by an interest in mental imagery and emotion.
- Her research has demonstrated that mental imagery has a more powerful impact on emotion than its verbal counterpart.
- This is of clinical relevance given the historical focus on verbal thoughts (rather than imagery) in therapy.
- Her group’s particular interest is intrusive memories—imagery that springs to mind unbidden.
Current research
Her current research interest the reduction of intrusive memories after trauma. Such intrusive memories take the form of mental imagery. She has developed an imagery competing task intervention (ICTI) from work in the laboratory, and more recently has tested this in randomised controlled trials for individuals after psychological trauma.