Kristoffer Månsson

Kristoffer Månsson

Assistant Professor | Senior Research Specialist | Docent
Telephone: +46852482784
Visiting address: Nobels väg 9, D3, 17165 Solna
Postal address: K8 Klinisk neurovetenskap, K8 CPF Månsson, 171 77 Stockholm

About me

  • * Associate Professor (Docent), Karolinska Institutet
    * Assistant Professor with research funding (100%) for 6 years, Karolinska
    Institutet
    * Senior Research Specialist, Karolinska Institutet (on leave)
    * International postdoctoral fellow via the Swedish Research Council:
    * Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, US (2021-2022)
    * Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin Germany (2019-2021)
    * Study director, Research school in clinical psychiatry, Karolinska
    Institutet (2017-2020)
    * Postdoctoral fellow, Stockholm University (2017-2019)
    * PhD, Linköping University (2011-2016)
    * Awarded the best scientific talk at the Alpine Brain Imaging Meeting,
    Champéry, Switzerland, 2020
    * Nominated (2018, Uppsala University; 2019, Karolinska Institutet) as an
    outstanding young researcher in psychology to the Swedish National
    Committee for Psychological Sciences.
    * Awarded the Aaron T Beck student scholarship in 2013.
    PhD (2016, Linköping University), Clinical psychology program (2011, Umeå
    University; 2012, Lic Clinical Psychologist, Socialstyrelsen).

Research

Teaching

  • Study director for the research school in clinical psychiatry at the Center
    for Psychiatry Research (2017-2020). Regularly teach methods in cognitive
    behavior therapy for clinical psychologists.

Articles

All other publications

Selected grants

  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2027
    Internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder is an evidence-based treatment in regular health care. Still, a considerable proportion of treated patients do not respond. There is also a debate on the importance of patients expectations’ for therapeutic outcomes. However, experimental evidence is lacking to answer this question. Our aim is thus to investigate the placebo response in social anxiety disorder, and the link between initial placebo responsiveness and subsequent outcome of CBT. First, we will manipulate expectations of anxiety relief. A benzodiazepine (a common anti-anxiety drug) will be administered with correct or incorrect information about clinical efficacy during a public speaking task. Self-reports and moment-to-moment variability in neural response will be measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the manipulation of expectations. The balanced placebo design allows us to dissect the total treatment effect into its components: drug, placebo, and interactions between the two. Second, patients undergo internet-delivered CBT after completing the placebo experiments. This project aims to unravel expectations´ influence on treatment response, and has a two-fold significance, 1) the scientific understanding of the neural mechanisms of treatment expectations, central for placebo, and 2) the development of pre-treatment predictors of CBT outcome which could improve precision in clinical decision making.

Grants

  • Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
    1 January 2024 - 31 January 2026
    The question of how emotions are triggered remains obscure. A recent influential theory is built on predicting coding, which states that the brain makes predictions and constantly compares these predictions with the actual incoming sensory information. The active inference theory of emotions posits that emotions arise when there is a mismatch between the bodily (interoceptive) sensations and what was predicted by the brain, i.e. when interoceptive prediction errors occur. This theory is extremely relevant for emotional disorders linked with infections (e.g. post-COVID), since infections can trigger various and intense interoceptive signals that can be difficult to predict by the brain. In this project, we will apply the active inference theory of emotions in an ecologically relevant model of infection, using an innovative experimental approach. We will go beyond the existing correlational designs by applying a causal intervention eliciting real sickness symptoms, and manipulating interoceptive prediction errors directly, in 240 participants. We hypothesize that emotional responses will arise during sickness when interoceptive prediction errors occur, i.e. when interoceptive sensations violate predictions. This project will therefore provide critical information to understand how individuals' predictions shape sickness behavior, and how emotions are generated in infection-related conditions, which could open new therapies for mood disorders associated with immune activation.
  • Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2026
    The question of how emotions are triggered remains obscure. A recent influential theory is built on predicting coding, which states that the brain makes predictions and constantly compares these predictions with the actual incoming sensory information. The active inference theory of emotions posits that emotions arise when there is a mismatch between the bodily (interoceptive) sensations and what was predicted by the brain, i.e. when interoceptive prediction errors occur. This theory is extremely relevant for emotional disorders linked with infections (e.g. post-COVID), since infections can trigger various and intense interoceptive signals that can be difficult to predict by the brain. In this project, we will apply the active inference theory of emotions in an ecologically relevant model of infection, using an innovative experimental approach. We will go beyond the existing correlational designs by applying a causal intervention eliciting real sickness symptoms, and manipulating interoceptive prediction errors directly, in 240 participants. We hypothesize that emotional responses will arise during sickness when interoceptive prediction errors occur, i.e. when interoceptive sensations violate predictions. This project will therefore provide critical information to understand how individuals' predictions shape sickness behavior, and how emotions are generated in infection-related conditions, which could open new therapies for mood disorders associated with immune activation.
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2023 - 31 December 2026
    Socioemotional perception is of importance for social and emotional function in humans everyday life. Previous neuroimaging studies have investigated socioemotional perception (e.g. of facial expressions) at a group level ignoring the fact this is an individual phenomena. Precision neuroimaging (PI) focus on single subjects and many repeated trials. Using PI to study human brain function associated with socioemotional perception is an unexplored territory.In this four years neuroimaging project we will scan 8 subjects during 15 scanning sessions. During scanning subject will be exposed to blocks of dynamic visual, auditory and visual-auditory socioemotional stimuli varying in valence (positive-negative) and arousal (high-low). A multivariate within-subject approach will be used including functional and structural brain data, subjective responses and various physiological measures. All analyses are conducted at the individual level, meaning that statistical models are fit separately to data from each participant. Standard functional and structural MRI data analysis methods will be used in combination with explorative AI approaches for identifying correlations within and between patterns of brain connectivity and behavioral outcome measures.This as a proof-of-concept project in the forefront of a coming paradigm shift in cognitive neuroscience which will eventually open new scientific venues and making it possible to conduct parallel animal research to get at neural mechanisms.

Employments

  • Senior Research Specialist, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, 2022-
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, 2022-2028

Degrees and Education

  • Docent, Karolinska Institutet, 2022

Distinction and awards

  • Honorable Mention from Biological Psychiatry's Somerfeld-Ziskind Research Award, For selection as a finalist for the 2023 Somerfeld-Ziskind Research Award., Society of Biological Psychiatry, 2023

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Events from KI