Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Winner 2025 — Transcript

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1. 0:04Can you please raise your hand if you
2. 0:06know at least one person who suffers
3. 0:08from anxiety?
4. 0:11Well, that unfortunately is not very
5. 0:13surprising because anxiety disorders are
6. 0:15the most common form of mental illness
7. 0:18and unfortunately um the treatment that
8. 0:21we currently have available only work
9. 0:23for about 60% of people. This is mainly
10. 0:26because we don't really understand
11. 0:27what's going on in the brain of people
12. 0:29who have anxiety disorders.
13. 0:31So um we also don't know how different
14. 0:35anxiety disorders like generalized
15. 0:37anxiety, panic disorder and social
16. 0:39anxiety affect the brain in the same
17. 0:41way. So to better understand this we can
18. 0:44look at how thinking processes like
19. 0:46attention, memory and loss aversion are
20. 0:50affected in people who have anxiety.
21. 0:53There are a few ways we can do that. For
22. 0:55example, we can look at uh people who
23. 0:58already have anxiety disorders. The
24. 1:00problem with that is that we can't
25. 1:02switch their symptoms on and off. Um so
26. 1:04we can't see how their anxiety would be
27. 1:07working uh their cognition would be
28. 1:08working without anxiety. We can do that
29. 1:11with animal models. However, um often
30. 1:14animal models results don't really
31. 1:16translate into humans. That's where
32. 1:19experimental models of anxiety disorders
33. 1:21come in. These involve temporarily
34. 1:23inducing anxiety in people who usually
35. 1:25don't have anxiety. For example, we can
36. 1:27tell people that they might receive a
37. 1:29shock and this anticipation might cause
38. 1:32them feeling similar to generalized
39. 1:33anxiety. Or we can give them some uh gas
40. 1:37that has more CO2 which can cause some
41. 1:39symptoms of shortness of breath and
42. 1:40increased heart rate. Those are similar
43. 1:42to panic attacks. And finally, my
44. 1:45personal favorite, we can tell them that
45. 1:46they would need to give a speech in
46. 1:48front of an audience. And as I can
47. 1:49confirm today, that can definitely cause
48. 1:51some feelings of social anxiety. So this
49. 1:54is what I did during my PhD. I was
50. 1:55comparing how these three different
51. 1:57anxiety models affect cognition. And I
52. 2:00found that uh attention is decreased
53. 2:03during generalized anxiety or like
54. 2:05thread of shocks and not really affected
55. 2:08by the other two models. Short-term
56. 2:10memory is improved in both under thread
57. 2:14or shock and also when people are
58. 2:16inhaling the CO2 gas. but is actually
59. 2:19decrease under social anxiety and
60. 2:22finally loss aversion is increased in
61. 2:24all three anxiety disorders. So this is
62. 2:28really interesting because then we can
63. 2:29perhaps develop treatments which are
64. 2:31more tailored to those cognitions to
65. 2:34improve the symptoms in people who you
66. 2:36might have know have anxiety disorders.
67. 2:39Thank you very much.