Anna Krogh Andreassen defends her PhD dissertation entitled
Working memory and executive functions in children of parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and the predictive power of parental severity of illness.
Time: Monday, 14 November 2022 at 13.00-15.00 CET
Venue: Auditorium G206-145, Aarhus University Hospital,
Palle Juul-Jensens Blvd. 99, 8200 Aarhus N.
The defence is open to the public and will be conducted in English. Following the defence the Psychosis Research Unit, Aarhus University Hospital Psychiatry, will host an informal reception.
Assessment committee:
Professor Charlotte Rask (chairman and moderator of the defence) Research Unit, Department of Child- and Adolescent Psychiatry, Aarhus University Hospital Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark
Professor Neeltje van Haren Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychology, Erasmus University Medical Centre-Sophia Children’s Hospital, The Netherlands
Associate professor Dea Siggaard Stenbæk Neurobiology Research Unit, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark
Supervisors:
Associate professor Vibeke Fuglsang Bliksted (main supervisor) Psychosis Research Unit, Aarhus University Hospital Psychiatry; The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research (iPSYCH); Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Professor Ole Mors Psychosis Research Unit, Aarhus University Hospital Psychiatry; The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research (iPSYCH), Denmark
Associate professor Rikke Lambek Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Aja Neergaard Greve Psychosis Research Unit, Aarhus University Hospital Psychiatry; The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research (iPSYCH), Denmark
Professor John McGrath National Centre for Register-Based Research, Aarhus University; Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Australia
Summary of the PhD project:
Executive functions are higher-order cognitive processes that are crucial to everyday life. Executive function impairments are known to be associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder but the knowledge of the presence and development in executive functions before onset of illness is sparse.
With the aim of adding to previous knowledge of the relationship between executive functions and severe mental illness, this PhD project included a high risk cohort of Danish children born to parents with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder as well as population-based controls.
We employed a longitudinal perspective, as we included data from children at age 7 and again at age 11.
The PhD project covered the following studies:
- The development in executive functions based on caregiver and teacher ratings.
- Heterogeneity in working memory function and the development in heterogeneity.
- The prediction of working memory impairments in the child based on parental severity of illness using data from the Danish National Registers.
