2 PhDs in Experimental Psychopathology specifically involved in VICI project 'a new approach to fear reduction by disrupting reconsolidation of threat memories' (1,0 fte)

The PhD projects are part of an NWO VICI grant awarded to Dr Iris Engelhard and will be performed in the Experimental Psychopathology section of the Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University. Research will be conducted within the context of a research program that concentrates on the understanding of psychological processes of fear and anxiety with a focus on mechanisms of change in the treatment of anxiety and related disorders.

The VICI project focuses on the development of therapeutic techniques to persistently weaken pathological fear. Patients often suffer from vivid mental images of trauma in the past and future threatening events that were never experienced. These images are debilitating and have a very persistent nature. Insights from neuroscience show that a consolidated trauma memory can return to a transient labile state, from which it has to restabilize in order to persist. This process of reconsolidation renders the memory sensitive to modification. A promising method to modify a retrieved mental image is to simultaneously perform another secondary task, resulting in a reduction of the intensity of the memory. PhD1 will focus on devaluation of episodic memories of both past and future threat events. Given that sleep crucially affects restabilization of a retrieved memory, the project will combine memory modification with manipulation of sleep. Using the experimental model of fear conditioning PhD2 will focus on weakening fear memory with the secondary task. Findings from these fundamental experimental studies on healthy individuals will be translated to clinical practice, within the larger framework of the VICI project. The core tasks will include active participation in the development of experimental design, acquisition and analysis of data, collaboration with the other parts of the research program and communication of results via publication in scientific journals. There will be close collaborations with different disciplines within the Utrecht University, University Medical Center Utrecht, and other (international) centers.