- E-mailanders.thorsen@uib.no
- Visitor AddressMøllendalsbakken 9, 3 etg.5009 Bergen
- Postal AddressPostboks 78075020 Bergen
I'm passionate about how we can offer the best possible treatment to people with mental disorders, and particularly trauma, obsessive-compulsive and anxiety disorders. This is a patient group where the disorder often brings life to a halt and where providing the right treatments can have a very big impact for the affected person.
I am also very interested in how we can use biological markers to find out how mental disorders develop and are maintained, as well as how effective treatments leads to changes in the body and brain. This field of research has great potential to increase our understanding of mental disorders, how the brain works and how plastic the brain is.
PRPSYK303 - Biological basis for affective, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders, and how the brain changes after treatment
See https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PZJQNkIAAAAJ for an updated list of my publications.
- (2023). The functional connectome in obsessive-compulsive disorder: resting-state mega-analysis and machine learning classification for the ENIGMA-OCD consortium. Molecular Psychiatry.
- (2023). Right Prefrontal Cortical Thickness Is Associated With Response to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Children With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 403-414.
- (2022). The thalamus and its subnuclei—a gateway to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Translational Psychiatry.
- (2022). An fMRI study of cognitive planning before and after symptom provocation in pediatric obsessive–compulsive disorder. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience. E409-E420.
- (2021). Longitudinal changes in neurometabolite concentrations in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex after concentrated exposure therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders. 344-352.
- (2021). Disentangling Within- and Between-Person Effects During Response Inhibition in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 1-10.
- (2021). Diffusion Tensor Imaging Before and 3 Months After Concentrated Exposure Response Prevention in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 1-11.
- (2020). Structural neuroimaging biomarkers for obsessive-compulsive disorder in the ENIGMA-OCD consortium: medication matters. Translational Psychiatry.
- (2020). Stable inhibition-related inferior frontal hypoactivation and fronto-limbic hyperconnectivity in obsessive–compulsive disorder after concentrated exposure therapy. NeuroImage: Clinical. 1-8.
- (2020). Effects of Bergen 4-day treatment on resting-state graph features in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 1-10.
- (2019). The Emotional Brain in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
- (2018). Symptom Dimensions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as Predictors of Neurobiology and Treatment Response. Current Treatment Options in Psychiatry. 182-194.
- (2018). Processing speed mediates the longitudinal association between ADHD symptoms and preadolescent peer problems. Frontiers in Psychology. 1-9.
- (2018). Emotional Processing in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of 25 Functional Neuroimaging Studies. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 563-571.
- (2018). Emotion regulation in obsessive-compulsive disorder, unaffected siblings, and unrelated healthy control participants. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 1-9.
- (2016). Parental socioeconomic status and child intellectual functioning in a Norwegian sample. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 399-405.
- (2015). Neuroimaging of psychotherapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: A systematic review. Psychiatry Research : Neuroimaging. 306-313.
- (2014). Neurobiology of cognitive remediation therapy for schizophrenia: a systematic review. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
More information in national current research information system (CRIStin)
Concentrated exposure treatment for PTSD (in collaboration with the Bergen Center for Brain Plasticity, Haukeland University Hospital)
The study examines whether concentrated exposure therapy is a desired, safe and effective treatment for people with post-traumatic stress disorder. The study consists of several phases where treatment is delivered either individually or in a combined group/individual format.
Neurobiological markers of response to concentrated exposure therapy (in collaboration with the Bergen Center for Brain Plasticity, Haukeland University Hospital)
The project extends our previous research to investigate if neurobiological markers from functional and structural brain imaging (MRI) and epigenetics (DNA methylation) can be used to predict and explain why many but not all patients with obsessive-compulsive and anxiety disorders improve after concentrated exposure treatment over four days in both adults and adolescents.
The role of traumatic stress and internalizing disorders for brain development in adolescence (in collaboration with NORMENT/Oslo University Hospital)
Adolescence is a sensitive period for brain development and mental disorders. At the same time, it is a period when too many young people experience traumatic events. In this project, we investigate the connection between brain development, internalizing disorders (anxiety, trauma, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression) and traumatic stress in the American Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.
Translational approach to the understanding and treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Measuring clinical change through neuroimaging (in collaboration with the Bergen Center for Brain Plasticity, Haukeland University Hospital)
The project investigates whether concentrated exposure treatment over four days is associated with changes in the brain. This will be explored through both functional and structural brain imaging combined with clinical measurements.