Certain personality traits heighten susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. Therefore a research team at UmeƄ University wanted to study whether this patient group had any susceptibility factors that could explain the development of their disorder. The patient group is distinguished by being anxious and pessimistic, with a weak sense of self, which is common in many psychiatric disorders. What was special about this group was that they stood out as persistent, ambitious, and pedantic individuals.
Being ambitious, fastidious, and overachieving also appears to make a person more prone to exhaustion syndrome. According to Agneta Sandstrƶmās dissertation, individuals with exhaustion syndrome demonstrate impaired memory and attention capacity as well as reduced brain activity in parts of the frontal lobes. Regulation of the stress hormone cortisol is also impacted in the group, with altered sensitivity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis).
The dissertation addresses whether it is possible to use neuropsychological tests to confirm and describe the cognitive problems reported by patients suffering from exhaustion syndrome. Above all, patients demonstrate problems regarding attention and working memory. Patients were also asked to perform working memory tests while lying in a functional magnetic resonance camera that measures the brains activity patterns. Exhaustion syndrome patients proved to have a different activity pattern in the brain when they performed a language test of their working memory, and they also activate parts of the frontal lobe less than healthy subjects and a group of patients who had recently developed depression.
The HPA axis in the patient group shows reduced sensitivity in the pituitary, with less secretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) following stimulation with corticotropin (CRH), as well as heightened sensitivity in the adrenal cortex, with increased release of cortisol in relation to the amount of ACTH secreted. There is also a difference in the diurnal rhythm of corisol, with the patients presenting a flatter secretion curve than the other two groups. The researchers could not detect any reduction in the volume of the hippocampus in the patient group. The proportion of individuals with measurable levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin 1 is higher in the patient group.
In summary, the studies indicate that there is an association between personality, general health, cognitive ability, and neuroendocrinal dysfunction in exhaustion syndrome. The cognitive problems reflected in the test scores are also mirrored in a different activity pattern in the brain for patients with exhaustion depression. Agneta Sandstrƶm has also found support for there being similarities with clinical depression, but with well-defined differences.
Dissertation: Neurocognitive and endocrine dysfunction in women with exhaustion syndrome
Read the whole or parts of the dissertation at:
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-37280
Agneta Sandstrƶm works as a psychologist at the Stroke and Brain-damage Ward Remonthagen in Ćstersund and is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Medicine. She can be reached at phone:
+46 (0)63-15 49 16;
mobile +46 (0)70-327 93 90;
e-mail agneta.sandstrom@jll.se
A portrait picture of Agneta Sandstrƶm is found on
http://www.medfak.umu.se/digitalAssets/54/54875_agneta-stalld-web.jpg
8 December, 2021 - UmeƄ universitet
Asymmetric sex chromosomes were independently shaped during evolution in many species, and different strategies evolved alongside to overcome the resulting imbalance in genetic information. Molecular biologist Marie-Line Faucillion has studied this in her dissertation defended at UmeƄ University, Sweden. Her findings can be useful to better understand how sex chromosomes are regulated, but also to
9 March, 2021 - UmeƄ universitet
Large asteroids or comets hitting Earth, massive volcanic eruptions and other single, deadly events are usually the focus for scientists seeking to reconstruct Earthās past mass extinctions. In a new study, researchers from UmeĆ„ University and the University of Florida instead uncovered a new major transition between past marine faunas that could not be explained by a single catastrophic event.
8 December, 2020 - UmeƄ universitet
On 10 December, the Nobel Prize Ceremony will take place at which Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna will be awarded their Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. Emmanuelle Charpentier made the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 when she worked at UmeƄ University.
22 October, 2020 - UmeƄ universitet
The Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine (WCMM) in UmeƄ has been granted SEK 170 million in operational support and another SEK 68 million for recruitments into data-driven Life Science by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
Expertsvar, The Swedish Research Council, Hantverkargatan 11B, Stockholm SWEDENPhone +46(0)8 546 44 000
P.O. Box 1035, SE-101 38 Stockholm, expertsvar@vr.se
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