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CRC/TRR 393 Trajectories of Affective Disorders: Cognitive-Emotional Mechanisms of Symptom Change

Prize: Fellow/scholarshipResearch projects/Networks

Recipients

Description

Affective disorders (AD) are a major global factor in disability and lost life years, comprising major depressive disorder
(MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD). In addition to the acute symptoms during an episode, it is the course of illness over
several years that affects individual suffering, psychosocial functioning, and socio-economic burden. While there is
increasing knowledge with respect to risk factors for the onset of AD and neurobiological processes during episodes,
there is still a profound lack of understanding about mechanisms and modulating factors involved in long-term
disease trajectories, recurrences and remissions, chronicity, and functional decline. A better understanding of these
factors and mechanisms will be crucial for improving the treatment of AD.
The goals of our research initiative are to identify trajectories of recurrences and remissions in AD, to determine
cognitive-emotional mechanisms and neurobiological correlates of acute symptom changes, and to probe mechanism-
based interventions. These goals will be achieved by using a threefold approach: (i) we will apply continuous mobile
assessment in a prospective cohort, combining in-depth clinical characterization of individual courses of illness with
multilevel neuroimaging, biobanking, and -omics analyses in n=1,500 AD patients and healthy subjects over a two-
year follow-up with multiple assessments. The participants of this new, joint cohort will stem from the existing DFG
FOR 2107 and BMBF Early-BipoLife cohorts with their wealth of available data (Domain A); (ii) we will identify key
cognitive-emotional mechanisms (emotion regulation, expectation, social cognition, cognitive-behavioural rhythms)
and their neurobiological correlates that mediate the effects of stressors on symptom changes in parallelized human
studies and animal experiments (tandem projects; Domain B); and (iii) we will apply interventions that specifically
probe the key cognitive-emotional mechanisms regarding their associations with recurrences and remissions in AD
(Domain C).
Degree of recognitionNational

Keywords

DFG Classification of Subject Areas according to Review Boards