UM Star Lecture: Stress, the Brain and Behavior: what is the Influence of Food? (Dutch lecture)
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Stress is among the leading causes of affective disorders throughout the world, and associated with severe psycho-medical consequences and mortality. Current evidence reveals the importance of specific gene-by-brain risk factors that increase the risk for stress-related diseases. Since brain function can be influenced by food; certain nutrients are thought to influence stress and the risk for related diseases. Since then, there has been a growing interest in the way food may impact human performance. This has led to the launching of a wide range of natural products on the nutraceutical market, with the promise that they will boost healthy mental processes and/or reduce psychopathological symptoms. However most of them are not supported by the majority of good (randomize-controlled) studies. The lecture will introduce into the topic of stress, the brain and behavior, explains how this might be influenced by food, and finally will discuss how to separate myths from facts regarding food-brain-behavior claims.
Boven Breda
Rob Markus, PhD is Professor of Neuropsychology at Maastricht University with a particular interest in how brain biochemical processes relate to stress-induced psychopathology. After working as a therapist in several institutions (from 1985-1991), he completed his study Experimental Psychology (1993), worked in teaching and research (1993-1994) and completed a PhD in Experimental-biological Psychology (1999) at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. After fulfilling several positions at universities and companies, he became an international recognized expert on the relation between stress, brain (gene) vulnerability and the development of cognitive-affective disorders as well as in developing dietary treatment/assessment methods. He obtained grants and initiated/completed research projects on the effect of dietary brain manipulation in (genetic-) vulnerable subjects. Besides his research, teaching, and supervising/managing duties, Markus also has a career in teaching Psychology as well as in training communication- and managerial skills.