On February 11, Prof. DR. Raffael Kalisch will be in Nijmegen. He is Research Group Leader, Director of Neuroimaging Center in Mainz, Germany, and Professor of Human Neuroimaging. Currently he works at the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research in Mainz. He has been invited by Guillén Fernandez Reumann to give a lecture about “Sources of stress resilience”. Prof. Raffael Kalish will present about general resilience method and theory and specifically about the role for positive appraisal style.
Abstract
Stress responses are determined by the evaluation of potential stressors with respect to their relevance for one’s goals and needs. Research in cross-sectional and longitudinal, observational and interventional cohorts conclusively shows that a tendency to appraise stressors in a realistic to slightly illusionary position fashion (Positive Appraisal Style) promotes adaptive stress responses and, eventually, stress resilience. Within this framework, I will examine one important case of adaptive stress response regulation: fear extinction. Using a translational approach, I will argue that the positive update of threat evaluations during extinction towards predictions of safety is a reward-like learning process and that individual differences in this process underlie individual differences in fear extinction. I will examine how such prediction updates are transformed into stable long-term safety memories that limit unnecessary stress responses in future encounters of conditioned stimuli. These processes depend on an interplay of dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems. I will discuss implications for resilience theory and intervention science.