Course The science of stress and resilience

The course C309/05 The science of stress and resilience is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, spring 2025.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Requirements for participation: Basic knowledge about human psychology, CNS anatomy and physiology is an advantage, but not required. 

Aim: This course enables a qualified debate about the relevance and applicability of current knowledge on stress and resilience to advance mental health and clinical practice.

Learning outcomes: After this course, participants should be able to:

Present a neurobiological definition of stress.

Distinguish between stressors, stress and stress responses.

Describe the following responses/states:

1. mobilization (fight-flight).
2. immobilization (freeze).
3. restitution (rest-digest/breed-feed/calm-connect).

Describe the signaling pathways of commonly experienced stress symptoms such as increased heart rate, sweaty palms and “the mind going blank”.

Describe processing modes in the nervous system that make mobilization “first choice”.

Relate stress processes to theories of energy budgetting and survival. 

Describe the impact of predictive coding on our behaviour.

Describe the theorized role of interoceptive networks.

Describe the relationship between stress responses and emotions and predictive coding.

Define “psychological safety” and describe how stressmobilization and immobilization interacts with ideals/quests for psychological safety.

Describe the theorized interaction (acc. to polyvagal theory) between neural networks involved in restitution and positive/negative social co-regulation.

Place mobilization, immobilization and restitution states in the context of evolutionary biology.

Explain how individual life experiences influence individual variation in stress sensitivity and resilience.

How can childhood trauma predispose to life-long heightened stress sensitivity, and how can a safe childhood make you stress resilient?

Explain the link between long-term stress and diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, depression and chronic pain disorders

List presumed reasons for the “stress epidemic”, i.e. what are the common denominators of stress triggers, and which particular features of modern societies could be held responsible for producing excessive stress?

Present arguments on how schools, work places and clinical practices could potentially benefit from insights into the science of stress and resilience.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 32 hours. 

Content: Stress, defined as a state of physiological and emotional disequilibrium, has a great impact on our everyday experiences, cognitive functions, well-being and health. This course explains the functions and power of stress in terms of subconscious processes of energy budgeting, predictive coding, and emotional impulses anchored in our personal and evolutionary past. We look into how stress processes play a critical role in human social interactions and interfere with psychological safety. Central mechanisms in the transformation of long term stress to toxic stress and diseases will be explained and exemplified in detail, raising the question of how we can protect ourselves from stress-related symptoms and diseases in a modern society that generates extraordinary high levels of stress. We dive into psychophysiological mechanisms of resilience, and how specific types of behaviour and practices may cultivate positive emotions and optimize the balance between autonomic states, hence enhancing our wellbeing and health. We will make some reflections and exercises, and discuss the possibilities and potential benefits of integrating the science of stress and resilience into clinical practice, education, workplaces etc.

Instructors: Karen Johanne Pallesen

Venue: Aarhus University, Aarhus 

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 14 May 2025 10:00 - 16:00
• 15 May 2025 10:00 - 16:00
• 16 May 2025 10:00 - 16:00