Dr WONG, Man Lok Nichol    黃聞洛 博士
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Member
Centre for Psychosocial Health
Contact
ORCiD
0000-0003-0050-7736
Phone
(852) 2948 7431
Email
nmlwong@eduhk.hk
Address
10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong
Website
https://pappl.eduhk.hk/rich/web/person.xhtml?pid=300609&name=WONG, Man Lok Nichol
Scopus ID
56039025800
Research Interests
Dr. Wong is broadly interested in affective neuroscience and the biopsychosocial determinants of mental health. He aims to understand how we process emotions and regulate emotional experiences, and he explores the neuro-affective mechanisms in people with and without socio-affective issues. Dr. Wong mostly employs neuroimaging and behavioural studies in his research. His current research interests include loneliness, depression, and autism.
Personal Profile

Dr. Nichol Wong received his PhD in Psychology at the University of Hong Kong and his postdoctoral training at King’s College London. He then returned to the University of Hong Kong and worked as a Research Assistant Professor. Dr. Wong is currently an Assistant Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong. 

Research Interests
Dr. Wong is broadly interested in affective neuroscience and the biopsychosocial determinants of mental health. He aims to understand how we process emotions and regulate emotional experiences, and he explores the neuro-affective mechanisms in people with and without socio-affective issues. Dr. Wong mostly employs neuroimaging and behavioural studies in his research. His current research interests include loneliness, depression, and autism.
Research Outputs
Journal Publications
Liu, J. M., Gao, M., Zhang, R., Wong, N. M. L., Wu, J., Chan, C. C. H., & Lee, T. M. C. (2024). A machine-learning approach to model risk and protective factors of vulnerability to depression. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 175, 374-380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2024.04.048
Huang, Q., Ellis, C. L., Leo, S. M., Velthuis, H., Pereira, A. C., Dimitrov, M., Ponteduro, F. M., Wong, N. M. L., Daly, E., Murphy, D. G. M., Mahroo, O. A., & McAlonan, G. M. (2024). Retinal GABAergic alterations in adults with autism spectrum disorder. The Journal of Neuroscience, 44(14), e1218232024. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1218-23.2024
Huang, Q., Velthuis, H., Pereira, A. C., Ahmad, J., Cooke, S. F., Ellis, C. L., Ponteduro, F. M., Puts, N. A. J., Dimitrov, M., Batalle, D., Wong, N. M. L., Kowalewski, L., Ivin, G., Daly, E., Murphy, D. G. M., & McAlonan, G. M. (2023). Exploratory evidence for differences in GABAergic regulation of auditory processing in autism spectrum disorder. Translational Psychiatry, 13, 320. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02619-8

Projects
Personalised transcranial direct current stimulation to reduce daily loneliness in people with subthreshold depression
Objectives: To evaluate the effects of multi-session personalised tDCS on real-life loneliness, mood and depressiveness in people with subthreshold depression.
Hypothesis to be tested: We test whether people would rate more positive for social stimuli immediately after and after 3 months of tDCS interventions; whether the tDCS interventions would reduce loneliness, negative mood, depression symptoms, bringing positive change to neural correlates; whether changes induced by personalised tDCS would be greater than the conventional tDCS; and whether the more positive ratings for social stimuli after tDCS interventions would be associated with the change in loneliness, mood, depression symptoms, and neural correlates.
Design and subjects: A randomised controlled trial is proposed and subjects are individuals with subthreshold depression.
Instruments: Validated tests and questionnaires will be used. Brain activations and connectivity will be acquired using a 3.0 Tesla MRI scanner.
Interventions: Participants will be randomly allocated to either the personlised tDCS group (individualised stimulation site), the conventional tDCS group (F3 as stimulation site), or the sham control group to receive 10 sessions of tDCS.
Main outcome measures: Loneliness, mood, depression symptoms, brain activations and connectivity are the main outcome measures.
Data analysis: Linear mixed models will be setup with groups, days, timepoints (pre-, immediately after, and 3 months after intervention), and their interaction as fixed factors, subjects as random intercepts.
Expected results: It is expected that both personalised and conventional tDCS will bring positive effects on people’s loneliness and depressiveness, with the effects larger in personalised tDCS.
Project Start Year: 2024, Principal Investigator(s): WONG, Man Lok, Nichol

 
Implication of loneliness on cerebellum versus dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in socio-affective processing
Humans are social species, and it is through connecting with each other we have access to necessary resources and support. Such social connections are critical to our mental well-being, and feeling of loneliness, or perceived social isolation, could have detrimental impact to our physical (e.g., cardiovascular disease) and mental well-being. Existing interventions on loneliness have limited success, possibly due to our lack of understanding of its underlying neuropsychological mechanisms. Current research on the neural underpinnings of loneliness primarily focuses on prefrontal cortex (PFC), amygdala, and ventral striatum. The contribution of cerebellum to loneliness is under-studied, and recent work from our and other researchers suggests that the cerebellum is critical to socio-affective process and loneliness. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (tMS) is brain stimulation technique that is safe and effective in modulating brain and biopsychosocial functions. By applying tMS to a specific brain region in a sham-controlled design, neurobehavioural evidence of a causal relationship between the neural underpinning and the psycho-social process/behaviour can be identified. How neuromodulating cerebellar activities utilising tMS can alter our socio-affective processing in relation to loneliness, is unclear. In this connection, this project will address two primary research questions: (Q1) Whether cerebellum tMS has an effect on socio-affective processing and is different from dlPFC tMS. (Q2) Whether loneliness would be associated to the effect of cerebellum tMS on socio-affective processing differently than dlPFC tMS.
Project Start Year: 2024, Principal Investigator(s): WONG, Man Lok, Nichol

 
Using Cerebellar Connectivity to Stratify Depression Phenotype in Social Functioning

Project Start Year: 2024, Principal Investigator(s): WONG, Man Lok, Nichol

 
A novel conditioning approach to counter loneliness in adults
Loneliness is a significant threat to people's health because it predisposes depression and increases mortality. Conventional belief is that loneliness can be measured by the number of social connections and can be treated by opportunities for social activities. We argue that loneliness is subjective, and existing interventions for loneliness have failed to hit the root of the problem – the altered socio-affective processing. Therefore, we will apply a novel paradigm of intervention grounded in the principles of conditioning in lonely adults, and investigate the change in their socio-affective processing, loneliness, depressive symptoms, and neural correlates. The outcome of this project will benefit the general population in promoting betterment of mental health and quality of life, bringing positive change to well-being. It will also generate in-depth understanding of how loneliness is tied to socio-affective processing and how loneliness can be reduced by applying principles of conditioning.
Project Start Year: 2024, Principal Investigator(s): WONG, Man Lok, Nichol

 
How are trait and state loneliness related to socio-affective processing and mental well-being?
Loneliness affects our mental well-being and is related to increased mortality rate. There is an upsurge of reports of loneliness and social isolation in recent years but research on their biopsychosocial mechanisms is scarce, limiting the opportunity of identifying cost-effect intervention strategies. Previously we found that lonelier people exhibited stronger cerebellar-visual cortex connectivity when attending to positive emotional words, for which the connectivity closely associates to attention processes. We further revealed in our meta-analysis that during affective processing, loneliness-activating brain regions converged to be functionally connected to the ventral attention network and the frontoparietal network, which are mainly involved in bottom-up stimulus-driven attention to salient stimuli and higher cognitive functions respectively. It is thus possible that loneliness implicates the attention and affective regulatory functions. Other researchers have also found that lonely people are more hypervigilant to negative socio-affective information. Under the social threat framework, loneliness feeling promotes repairing and maintaining of social ties and hence, could be reflected in our stimulus-driven attention to and regulation of the processing of the social relevant cues. What we don’t know is the neuropsychological mechanisms of our daily (state) loneliness feeling in relation to processing and attention towards socio-affective information. Here, an electroencephalography (EEG) study is proposed due to address three research questions: (Q1) How are trait and state loneliness related to socio-affective processing, mood, and mental well-being? (Q2) How are trait loneliness and the dynamics of the state loneliness associated to the EEG correlates of attention to and processing of socio-affective stimuli? (Q3) Do individual differences in EEG correlates modulate the relationships between loneliness, mood, and mental well-being?
Project Start Year: 2024, Principal Investigator(s): WONG, Man Lok, Nichol