A1: Associations between childhood maltreatment and responding to signals of threat and safety in a fear conditioning paradigm
In project A1, we aim to investigate how childhood adversity gets ‚under the skin‘ by investigating the neuro-physiological mechanisms underlying response differences to signals of threat and safety in individuals exposed and not exposed to early life adversity. To this end, we use state of the art functional and structural imaging in combination with defensive startle responding and measures of physiological arousal and endocrine stress responding (cortisol in hair and saliva) in a fear conditionig and generalization paradigm. Together with projects C1 and C2, we also follow a long-term perspective and assess symptom scores recurrently for a 72 month period to explore data driven subgroups and their link to responding in a fear conditioning paradigm in a large pooled sample.
- Project lead: Dr. Tina Lonsdorf