People

Her research is mostly focused on the following research topics: 

(1) Pre- and post-traumatic impairments. While previous research has heavily focused on posttraumatic responses, we focus on pretraumatic symptoms (i.e., the health status before a traumatic experience). That is, we examine how pretraumatic symptoms modify posttraumatic somatic or mental responses.

(2) The associations of somatic and psychosocial factors with epigenetic ageing in the general population. To date, our papers have investigated the roles of early resilience factors, personality traits, sleep disturbances, and social life on epigenetic clocks. Importantly, this research is done in close collaboration with researchers at University of Tampere, especially the group of professor Terho Lehtimäki, and researchers at University of Turku. 

(3) If a schizophrenia-susceptible genotype does not lead to psychoses, where does it lead to? The project investigates whether a high polygenic risk for schizophrenia predicts adverse life-span trajectories in domains of social isolation, affective ill-being, and every-day functioning in individuals without psychoses. This research is based on polygenic risk scores that have been created by our close collaborators at University of Tampere, i.e., the group of professor Terho Lehtimäki. 

Ida Autio is a doctoral student in medicine at University of Helsinki. Her doctoral dissertation is focused on how lifestyle factors are longitudinally associated with various indicators of epigenetic ageing in the Finnish population. Recently, she has been investigating whether sleep disturbances, dietary factors, or physical activity play a role in accelerated/decelerated epigenetic ageing. Her findings have indicated, for example, that sleep apnea symptoms are associated with accelerated epigenetic ageing more strongly than many other sorts of sleep disturbances. Ida Autio's research is done in close collaboration with the research group of Terho Lehtimäki (University of Tampere) and other collaborators.

Besides of his various other activities at University of Helsinki, he is doing a doctoral dissertation in our group. His current research focuses on pre- and posttraumatic trajectories of depressive symptoms and blood pressure. He uses data from the Young Finns Study, including a 38-year follow-up of potentially traumatic experiences and blood pressure as well as a 26-year follow-up of depressive symptoms. His extensive educational background (e.g., mathematics, statistics, information systems) is critically valuable when working with our dataset that has a longitudinal and complex structure.

Ville Junttila is a doctoral student in psychology at University of Helsinki. While previous research has extensively investigated various two-directional associations between external factors and personality, Ville Junttila's doctoral dissertation focuses on longitudinal interplay between personality traits, i.e., within-personality dynamics. That is, how changes in a single personality trait (such as self-transcendence) predict changes in other personality traits. His current work is based on the Cloninger's personality model including four temperament traits and three character traits. He utilizes complex statistical methods such as structural equation modeling. 

Veikka Lavonius is a doctoral student in psychology at University of Helsinki. His research focuses on whether high polygenic risk scores for common mental disorders (i.e., schizophrenia, major depression) predict differences in various domains of psychosocial development in those who have not developed the disorder (i.e., schizophrenia or major depression). For example, he has shown that a high polygenic risk for schizophrenia predicts mildly different development of the Big Five personality traits in adulthood. He utilizes various statistical methods suitable to longitudinal research on a population-based sample, including mixed models and growth curve models. 

She is a professor emerita in psychology and the original founder of this research group. She has an enormous number of publications that can be found in the linked websites. Importantly, she has collected most part of the psychological data of the Young Finns Study and, thus, enabled our current research.