Researcher Nathalie Holz has taken over the W3 professorship for developmental neuroscience in succession to Prof. Dr. Daniel Brandeis at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH). Holz completed her doctorate at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the CIMH under the supervision of Daniel Brandeis, where she currently heads the “Developmental Neuroscience in Psychiatry” working group. She previously worked at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour at Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

 Investigating early childhood risk exposures

Her research focuses on both empirical studies and the analysis of existing data sets on biopsychosocial risk and protective factors in mental development across the lifespan. For example, she is investigating the extent to which adverse environmental influences can lead to lasting changes in the structure and function of the human brain over the course of a lifetime. The working group under her leadership conducts various cohort studies, including the large longitudinal study “Mannheimer Risikokinderstudie” (MARS) (Mannheim Risk Child Study. This examines the mental development of participants with different early childhood risk exposures – with the aim of deriving recommendations for improving the prevention, early detection and early treatment of mental illness across the lifespan. To this end, the researchers followed the development of a birth cohort of more than 300 participants. The surveys took place at regular intervals, starting at the age of 3 months, and have now been running for 34 years.