Summer School on Stress and Cognition 2023

From 3-7 July 2023, speakers and participants from 19 different countries and 5 different continents came together in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, for a summer school entitled “Stress & Cognition: From Basic Mechanisms to Psychopathology”. The five-day summer school was hosted by Radboud University and Radboud University Medical Center and co-organized by the DynaMORE consortium. It covered topics ranging from basic stress physiology to the effects of stress on memory, consequences of early-life stress exposure, and stress resilience, and featured a prominent line-up of speakers.

31 March 2023 – Great 6th GA Meeting in Cologne, Germany

Kölle Alaaf – The 6th DynaMORE General Assembly (GA) Meeting in scenic Cologne, Germany, from 29-31 March 2023 was a great success, with nearly 30 delegates discussing scientific progress and reaching important decisions. We also welcomed a few new faces to the team, including a new project manager. Many thanks to Dr. Sara Stöber for five years of spot-on management and welcome, Sonja Leissner (also from concentris), who will lead the project to the finish line together with our scientific coordinator, Prof. Raffael Kalisch (LIR).

OUR VISION

We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers with the joint goal of developing an in silico model of stress resilience. To do so, we monitor healthy at-risk individuals (18+ years old) during stressful life phases, such as transition into adulthood or higher education, training-to-street transition (police officers), or abruptly changed life situations (accident victims in recovery). Multiple longitudinal studies collect psychological, behavioural, neural, and physiological markers, and apply advanced mathematical modelling to identify key risk indicators and resilience factors. The ultimate goal is a prognostic tool for people to monitor their mental stability, and to intervene effectively before the personal „tipping point“.

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WHY IT MATTERS

To this date, each year, more than half a billion people in the world are affected by anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or addiction. These conditions often occur as a consequence of stressors, such as traumatic events, challenging life circumstances, strenuous transition phases, or physical illness. In Europe alone, stress-related disorders are believed to cause direct and indirect economic costs of about 200 billion € every year. Despite ample research efforts into the cause of these disorders, the burden on affected individuals and society as a whole has further grown. We believe that, instead of focusing on  disease, we need to understand what keeps us healthy.

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