How stress affects our brain

Most of us claim to be “stressed out” every once in a while. We think of stress as a rather vague concept, no doctor would dream of diagnosing someone as “stressed”. But stress is anything but vague, says geneticist Nicole Datson, it is a clearly defined and very useful biological process. At Leiden University she studies how stress affects genes in our brain.
See video:

Fast Facts: The importance of stress

Dr. Onno Meijer from the Division of Medical Pharmacology has been awarded the NVF-prijs voor Farmacologie (formerly known as the Organonprijs voor Farmacologie) by the Dutch Pharmacological Society. This award is granted every two years not only as recognition for excellent performances but also as motivation for further pharmacological research.

On top of the Prof Tammeling Prize that Onno (left on the photo) received for best teacher of the LUMC 1 day earlier, our former student Gido Gravesteijn (right on the photo) received the Prof Noach award for best Bachelor thesis for his internship at Medical Pharmacology, supervised by Annelies Polman and Nicole Datson.

Dr Onno Meijer (LACDR Division of Medical Pharmacology) is the 2011 recipient of the prof G.J. Tammeling prize for Best Teacher at the Leiden University Medical Center. This annual prize is awarded for outstanding teaching in either curriculum of the Medical Faculty,  Biomedical Sciences or Medicine.

Beleid ouderschapsverlof loopt achter op praktijk.

De verlofregelingen in Nederland zijn verouderd: de traditionele regelingen sluiten niet meer aan op de veranderde arbeidssituatie in Nederland. Dit concludeert Mariëtte Hamer, Tweede Kamerlid voor de PvdA tijdens de Mevrouw de Professor talkshow over Spitsuur op het WOMEN Inc. Festival zondag 6 maart.

Robert T. de Jonge, student Life Sciences & Technology, ontving donderdag 16 december j.l. de 2010 DynaCorts Award voor zijn master thesis getiteld: ‘In silico identification of glucocorticoid receptor binding sites’.

Former LACDR Medical Pharmacology student Jona Mijalkovic was awarded the Student Prize at the recent KNMP Congress at the beginning of October.

The 2005 review title, "Stress in the Brain:
from adaptation to disease", by Ron de Kloet et al, is the most cited article of Nat Rev Neuroscience in that year. It attracted a total of 485 citations (>80 per year).

The Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) had chosen Amsterdam for its 7th FENS Forum in 2010, July 3-7. FENS Forum is the main European neuroscience meeting (more than 6000 participants), covering disciplines from molecular techniques to clinical studies and from bench to bedside.
http://fens2010.neurosciences.asso.fr/

Norman White, McGill University, Canada, July 15, 2010 commented: This study and its follow-up show that stress tends to impair spatial or cognitive memory but probably has no effect on stimulus-response (S-R) or habit memory. The apparent facilitation of S-R behavior may be due to reduced competition from spatial behavior.

Dr. Judith ter Horst, post-doc (EUROSTRESS) at the Division of Medical Pharmacology, LACDR/LUMC, Leiden received a grant from the KNAW, Dr. J.L. Dobberke Stichting voor Vergelijkende Psychologie, to study Sex and Stress: Memory systems and the role of the mineralocorticoid receptor in female mice.

NENS Stipends 2010: Current call for applications has been concluded.
Anastasia (Natascha) Diamantopoulou, guest PhD at the Division of Medical Pharmacology, LACDR/LUMC, Leiden was awarded a stipend for her work entitled: In situ hybridization for CRH mRNA in brain slices of stressed rats.

7th World Congress on Stress

25-27 Augustus 2010, Leiden

www.stress2010.com

Just before the holidays, researchers of the division of Medical Pharmacology published a paper in PNAS in which they reveal an important factor in the brain’s response to stress (PNAS 2009,  106(19):8038-42).

The synergy between LACDR and the Leiden University Medical Center, as envisioned in LCTD3, already exists with regard to teaching: the course Hormones and the Nervous System has been elected 'Best Block' of the Biomedical Science curriculum 2009.