Research group Establishing physiological biomarkers of perioperative stress

Aims of this research group

Our aim is to research vulnerability of stress-related mental disorders across the life span by conducting several studies related to the neurocognitive impact of on the one hand, childhood adversity and acute stress and on the other hand, the effects of healthy and pathological aging.

Moreover, we aim to extend our stress-related research in collaboration with researchers from Radboudumc’s cancer themes to investigate impact of acute stress in hematology oncology and prostate cancer.
 

Discoveries of this research group

This research group conducts research at the intersection between clinical psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience focusing on declarative memory. We used structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging methods next to experimental psychology.
 
One major achievement was to elucidate the neurobiology of cognitive schemas creating and maintaining depression, taking into account the impact of acute and early environmental adversity in adulthood and aging.
 
Another major achievement was to unravel the neurobiology of depressive subtypes and chronic depression in particular and set-up a neuromodulation outpatient clinic (led by P. van Eijndhoven) that develops and tests new forms of rTMS in depression.
 
Finally, our EU regional funding has allowed us to develop new cognitive interventions that are tested in currently ongoing clinical trials both in depression as well as stress-related adversity in cancer patients in Nijmegen as well as hospitals in Kleve and Essen.