Since completing his PhD in 1969 Chris Frith was funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust to study the relationship between the mind and the brain. He is a pioneer in the application of brain imaging to the study of mental processes. He has contributed more than 500 papers to scientific journals and is known especially for his work on agency, social cognition, and understanding the minds of people with mental disorders such as schizophrenia. For this work, he has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999), a Fellow of the Royal Society (2000) and a Fellow of the British Academy (2008). He chairs the APEX awards panel, through which the three academies (Royal Society, British Academy, Royal Society of Engineering) encourage multidisciplinary research.
He has published several books, including The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia (Psychology Press, 1992, classic edition 2015), which received the 1996 Book Award from the British Psychological Society and Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World (Wiley-Blackwell 2007), which was long-listed for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, 2008 and received the 2008 Book Award from the British Psychological Society. In 2009 he was awarded the Strömgren medal for work on Schizophrenia, the European Latsis Prize (jointly with Uta Frith) for work on ‘Human mind, Human brain’ and the International Prize from the Fyssen Foundation for work on Neuropsychology. In 2014 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize (jointly with Uta Frith) for philosophical oriented work in cognitive science. In 2017, he was listed among the top ten most influential neuroscientists of the modern era.