Nora Raschle 

Title

Emo­tion reg­u­la­tion and resilience in the devel­op­ing brain: Insights across health and neuropsychiatry 

Abstract

Emo­tion reg­u­la­tion, or the abil­i­ty to man­age the inten­si­ty, dura­tion, and expe­ri­ence of emo­tion­al respons­es, is cru­cial for healthy socioe­mo­tion­al devel­op­ment. It relies on the func­tion­al integri­ty of cor­ti­col­im­bic brain net­works, which mature through­out child­hood and ado­les­cence. Dis­rup­tions in these net­works are linked to neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, includ­ing con­duct dis­or­der (CD), char­ac­ter­ized by severe anti­so­cial and aggres­sive behaviors. 

This pre­sen­ta­tion exam­ines the neur­al under­pin­nings of emo­tion reg­u­la­tion in both healthy and neu­ropsy­chi­atric pop­u­la­tions, with a focus on CD. I will explore how envi­ron­men­tal influ­ences, such as ear­ly child­hood expe­ri­ences and par­ent­ing, shape the devel­op­ment of emo­tion reg­u­la­to­ry brain net­works. Neu­roimag­ing stud­ies reveal atyp­i­cal pre­frontal activ­i­ty dur­ing emo­tion reg­u­la­tion in indi­vid­u­als with CD, which relates to symp­tom sever­i­ty and pre­dicts treat­ment outcomes. 

Notably, cog­ni­tive behav­ioral inter­ven­tions tar­get­ing emo­tion recog­ni­tion and reg­u­la­tion show promise in restor­ing behav­ior and brain func­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those with stronger pre-treat­ment acti­va­tion in reg­u­la­to­ry regions. Addi­tion­al­ly, nov­el inter­gen­er­a­tional inves­ti­ga­tions of cor­ti­col­im­bic tracts in par­ent-child dyads will be reviewed, high­light­ing their poten­tial to inform about risk and resilience in the devel­op­ing brain. Over­all, these find­ings under­score the impor­tance of under­stand­ing emo­tion reg­u­la­tion with­in the con­text of risk and resilience, across gen­er­a­tions, with impli­ca­tions for pre­ven­tive and ther­a­peu­tic approaches. 

Biog­ra­phy

Prof. Dr. Nora Maria Raschle’s back­ground is in devel­op­men­tal cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science. After com­plet­ing her mas­ter stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich, Prof. Raschle con­duct­ed her doc­tor­al stud­ies at the Lab­o­ra­to­ries of Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and Children’s Hos­pi­tal in Boston (USA). She defend­ed her PhD the­sis with the top­ic „Inves­ti­gat­ing neu­ronal and behav­ioral pre­mark­ers of devel­op­men­tal dyslex­ia pri­or to read­ing onset“ in 2011 at the Uni­ver­si­ty in Zurich and con­tin­ued as a post­doc­tor­al researcher at Children’s Hos­pi­tal and Har­vard Med­ical School in Boston. 

Start­ing in 2013, Prof. Raschle worked as a senior research sci­en­tist and neu­roimag­ing group leader at the Depart­ment of Child and Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­a­try of the Psy­chi­atric Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal Basel and Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel in Switzer­land. Her work to date has focused on the inves­ti­ga­tion of typ­i­cal and atyp­i­cal brain devel­op­ment, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the ear­ly detec­tion and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of devel­op­men­tal and men­tal health dis­or­ders through the use of struc­tur­al and func­tion­al neuroimaging. 

https://​www​.jacob​s​cen​ter​.uzh​.ch/​e​n​/​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​/​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​a​l​_​n​e​u​r​o​s​c​i​e​n​c​e​/​t​e​a​m​/​r​a​s​c​h​l​e​.​h​tml