Bio: Dr. Klára Marečková is a Marie Curie Fellow in the Behavioral and Social Neuroscience (BeSoN) research group at the Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University. She received her M.Sc. in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging at the University of Nottingham (UK) in 2008. In 2009, she moved to Canada to start her PhD at the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, under the supervision of prof. Tomas Paus. She defended her PhD thesis entitled Sex differences and the role of sex hormones on face development and face processing in 2013 and moved with her husband to their home town of Brno, Czech Republic, where she joined the BeSoN research group as a postdoctoral fellow. This position enabled her to focus on clinical neuroscience, develop a close collaboration with prof. Goldstein’s team at Harvard Medical School (US), and work with 50-year worth of data from New England Family Study. Her current work funded by Marie Curie grant (FP7-2013-IEF) enriches the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (ELSPAC) with neuroimaging (structural, functional and diffusion MRI), physiological, hormonal and behavioural data and studies Biomarkers and underlying mechanisms of vulnerability to depression (VULDE). Together with Prof. Paus, Klara also developed a collaboration between CEITEC MU and the Child Mind Institute in New York (US) and studies the effects of sleep deprivation on structural fluctuations in white matter. In addition, she serves as a reviewer for a number of peer reviewed journals (e.g. Brain Structure and Function, Neuroimage, Psychoneuroendocrinology, Hormones and Behavior), conferences (e.g. OHBM), and grant proposals (e.g. H2020).
Research Interests: My research focuses on mapping the human brain in health and disease and particularly on biomarkers and underlying mechanisms of psychiatric diseases. This builds upon my expertise in population neuroscience, neuroimaging, and social neuroscience.
In my largest study so far, I focus on the neural-hormonal coupling during negative affect in patients with depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. I am verifying the presence of the neural and hormonal signatures of depressive symptomatology, which might possibly serve as early biomarkers, in a cohort of typically developing young adults. I am also interested in the comorbidity of psychiatric disorders with general medical disorders such as cardiovascular disease and obesity.
Thanks to the access to several European and North American cohort studies, I can take a life-course perspective and investigate the early origins of adult diseases. Starting with small-scale experimental studies focused on the sources of altered brain structure and function (e.g., studies of the impact of prenatal and pubertal androgens, studies of the role of menstrual cycle and the use oral contraception on brain function, studies on the effects of short term sleep deprivation on structural fluctuations in white matter), we can verify the results on samples from hundreds of individuals to improve our confidence in the findings. In particular, I am interested in prenatal and early postnatal exposures (stress, proinflammatory cytokines, androgens), development during adolescence, and their impact on health in adulthood.
Bio: Dr. Klára Marečková is a Marie Curie Fellow in the Behavioral and Social Neuroscience (BeSoN) research group at the Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University. She received her M.Sc. in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging at the University of Nottingham (UK) in 2008. In 2009, she moved to Canada to start her PhD at the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, under the supervision of prof. Tomas Paus. She defended her PhD thesis entitled Sex differences and the role of sex hormones on face development and face processing in 2013 and moved with her husband to their home town of Brno, Czech Republic, where she joined the BeSoN research group as a postdoctoral fellow. This position enabled her to focus on clinical neuroscience, develop a close collaboration with prof. Goldstein’s team at Harvard Medical School (US), and work with 50-year worth of data from New England Family Study. Her current work funded by Marie Curie grant (FP7-2013-IEF) enriches the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (ELSPAC) with neuroimaging (structural, functional and diffusion MRI), physiological, hormonal and behavioural data and studies Biomarkers and underlying mechanisms of vulnerability to depression (VULDE). Together with Prof. Paus, Klara also developed a collaboration between CEITEC MU and the Child Mind Institute in New York (US) and studies the effects of sleep deprivation on structural fluctuations in white matter. In addition, she serves as a reviewer for a number of peer reviewed journals (e.g. Brain Structure and Function, Neuroimage, Psychoneuroendocrinology, Hormones and Behavior), conferences (e.g. OHBM), and grant proposals (e.g. H2020).
Research Interests: My research focuses on mapping the human brain in health and disease and particularly on biomarkers and underlying mechanisms of psychiatric diseases. This builds upon my expertise in population neuroscience, neuroimaging, and social neuroscience.
In my largest study so far, I focus on the neural-hormonal coupling during negative affect in patients with depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. I am verifying the presence of the neural and hormonal signatures of depressive symptomatology, which might possibly serve as early biomarkers, in a cohort of typically developing young adults. I am also interested in the comorbidity of psychiatric disorders with general medical disorders such as cardiovascular disease and obesity.
Thanks to the access to several European and North American cohort studies, I can take a life-course perspective and investigate the early origins of adult diseases. Starting with small-scale experimental studies focused on the sources of altered brain structure and function (e.g., studies of the impact of prenatal and pubertal androgens, studies of the role of menstrual cycle and the use oral contraception on brain function, studies on the effects of short term sleep deprivation on structural fluctuations in white matter), we can verify the results on samples from hundreds of individuals to improve our confidence in the findings. In particular, I am interested in prenatal and early postnatal exposures (stress, proinflammatory cytokines, androgens), development during adolescence, and their impact on health in adulthood.
