sleep and psychopathology

Recent evidence shows a strong correlative link between sleep disturbances and intrusive memories after traumatic events, presumably due to insufficient (nocturnal) memory integration. However, the underlying mechanisms of this link and the role of specific neural activities during sleep are poorly understood so far. Here, we investigated how the intra-individual affective response to an experimental […]

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by intrusive re-experiencing of emotional memories of a traumatic event. Such memories are formed after exposure to trauma in the context of a cascading stress response including high levels of emotional arousal and stress hormone release. Sleep could be a key modulator of early memory formation and re-consolidation processes.

Cognitive models propose a negative memory bias as one key factor contributing to the emergence and maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD). The long-term consolidation of memories relies on memory reactivations during sleep. We investigated in SAD patients and healthy controls the role of memory reactivations during sleep in the long-term consolidation of positive and

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent psychiatric diseases typically emerging during childhood and adolescence. Biological vulnerabilities such as a protracted maturation of prefrontal cortex functioning together with heightened reactivity of the limbic system leading to increased emotional reactivity are discussed as factors contributing to the emergence and maintenance of SAD. Sleep

The individual tendency to interpret ambiguous situations negatively is associated with mental disorders.Interpretation biases are already evident during adolescence and due to the greater plasticity of the devel-oping brain it may be easier to change biases during this time. We investigated in healthy adolescentsand adults whether stabilizing memories of positive or negative scenes modulates the