Olga Therese Ousdal

Olga Therese Ousdal, MD PhD, is a consultant radiologist at Department of Radiology, Haukeland University Hospital, and an associate professor at Department of Biomedicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Bergen. Besides her formal training in radiology, Ousdal has completed a postdoc at Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London. Ousdal´s research addresses the neurobiological underpinning of internalizing mental disorders (anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder) as well as their treatments using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). She has published several papers on how traumatic stress, one of the most important risk factors for internalizing disorders, impact brain structure and function during the formative years of adolescence. More recently, Ousdal has explored the neurobiological effects of effective treatments (i.e. electroconvulsive therapy and psychotherapy) for internalizing disorders, and whether these effects can be associated with the clinical response. Understanding the treatments’ mechanisms of action is important for improving and personalizing existing treatments, and it may also increase our understanding of the neurobiological underpinning of internalizing disorders per se.