Sleep and movement as determinants of mood, anxiety and cognition

Sleep and physical activity are the two most modifiable behavioural determinants of mental health, and they are deeply entangled: poor sleep suppresses next-day movement, and inactivity degrades sleep quality the following night. Most evidence to date rests on self-report, which is weakly correlated with what devices actually record, and treats the two behaviours as independent exposures. This project uses device-measured sleep and movement, ideally with concurrent symptom assessment, to characterise that bidirectional relationship and its mental health consequences. The candidate will examine sleep duration, timing, regularity, efficiency, fragmentation and chronotype alongside physical activity volume and intensity, and test their joint and interactive associations with depressive symptoms, anxiety, cognitive performance and psychological wellbeing. Methods may include multilevel and time-varying models, day-level and within-person designs, ecological momentary assessment linked to concurrent sensor data, and prospective analyses in large cohorts. The project is designed for students from psychology who want rigorous quantitative and measurement training, and for students from quantitative backgrounds who want mental health outcomes at the centre of their work.