Individual differences in sensitivity to danger-alerting stimuli and fear are central to many aspects of psychopathology – high fear sensitivity is associated with anxiety disorders, low fear sensitivity with low affiliativeness and high callous-unemotional (CU) behaviours. I test the hypothesis that individual variations in sensitivity to fear arise early in ontogeny at the age when infants begin to show the first signs of behavioral sensitivity to social signals of fear. I use a sample of 400 children (belonging to the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study) and a longitudinal design and examine, for the first time, whether the early-emerging variations in infant sensitivity to social signals of fear predict neural (EEG) and behavioral (e.g., eye-tracking) responses to fear-alerting stimuli and associated risk for psychopathology at the age of 9 years The project may have important implications for building developmentally informed models of fear sensitivity and risk for psychopathology.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer type in women. Treatment of metastatic breast cancer requires surgical treatment and radiation therapy of the axillary lymph nodes. Surgical site infection (SSI) and lymphedema are common complications of breast cancer treatment. SSI can delay the onset of oncological treatment. Lymphedema causes swelling and skin infections of the arm and deposition of excess adipose tissue. There is no cure for lymphedema. Projects 1 and 2 aim to find biomarkers which could help in the early diagnosis of SSI and lymphedema using wound exudate from the operation area. With a biomarker that could predict these complication right after surgery, prophylactic treatment could be applied and the risk for treatment delay minimized. The project is already ongoing. In Project 3 we aim to characterize the tissue level changes occurring in chronic lymphedema. The aim is to pave the way for novel therapeutic approaches for this chronic and debilitating condition.

The prevalence of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as Crohns disease (CD) is increasing in the adult population. The diagnosis for these diseases is demanding and there is an urgent need for more specific and faster diagnostic methods. Recent studies have demonstrated that positron emission tomography (PET) could be used effectively in the diagnostics of CD. In this study, we evaluate the use of different PET tracers in the preclinical IBD model. After the validation process in the preclinical model, the most accurate tracer will be used in the clinical imaging of patients with a suspicion of CD. This project will provide further understanding in the pathophysiology of IBD and on the methods for more accurate and faster diagnosis in the field of IBD.

Polar glaciers are retreating, sea level is rising and habitats of arctic species are shifting poleward due to climate change. Antarctica will provide the last suitable habitat in changing climate for terrestrial species adapted to cold. Here we focus on the role of microbes and photoperiodic responses in adaptive radiation of plants in the Polar Regions. In a series of field samplings, spatial-phylogenomic approaches and transplantation and climate manipulation experiments, we will examine microbiomes and their genetic adaptability in the Arctic and Antarctica, and plants ability to expand their ranges into the Arctic. Experimental studies in Finland provide unique opportunities to the research, because comparable climate zones are present at higher latitudes with higher seasonal variation in day length compared to other Polar Regions.