Partner Profile

Mood and anxiety disorders, including major depression, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, have a high life-time prevalence and account for more disability than most other diseases worldwide. However, the efficacy of currently available treatment options is still unacceptably low and this is likely due to our lack of in-depth understanding of the pathophysiology of these disorders.
A main focus of our department lies on stress- and adverse life event-related psychiatric disorders. A better understanding of the adaptive as well as mal-adaptive molecular, cellular and circuit level factors influencing our response to stress will be important to define pathophysiological mechanisms of stress-related psychiatric disorders. For this, we propose to follow the trajectory of molecular, cellular and system changes leading to the development of or resilience to psychiatric symptoms following exposure to adverse life events and to investigate how such trajectories are moderated by genetic, epigenetic, environmental and developmental factors.