The ETUDE’s third network-wide training on the Mechanisms of Functional Disorders (FD) took place from 27 February – 3 March 2023 in Budapest, Hungary, and was organized by a committee of selected supervisors and Early Stage Researchers (ESRs). The training event was very-well attended with the participation of ESRs, lecturers, ESR’s supervisors, non-academic partners and external PhD students, which offered excellent networking opportunities.
The training week included in-depth lectures on dissociation between actual and perceived body events, explaining somatic symptom distress, brain body interaction in persistent somatic symptoms, the mechanisms in bodily distress and symptom perceptions, and subjective health complaints in adolescents.
The three ESRs from the mechanisms work package presented their scientific papers and the impressive progress of their studies. It was an interesting learning point to understand how theoretical frameworks covered in the lectures can be put into different practical lab methods.
The week also included several workshops with the active participation of ESRs. One workshop on handling missing data was facilitated by one of the ESRs Tara Petzke.
ESRs learnt a transferrable skill on dissemination during the training week through two workshops. The first workshop was about open science and open data which allowed ESRs to learn from each other on how to improve their preregistration skills of their scientific work. The second workshop was about Dissemination and Open Online Course (MOOC) which allowed ESRs to learn about educational material and delivery and discuss the format of the next planned MOOC.
Other important topics addressed by the workshops were on mechanistic approach on treating persistent somatic symptoms, measurement of interception and biological psychology factors and planning startups where ESRs learnt how to turn their projects into products and presented their products by the end of the session.
Overall, the third training event was a chance of learning, sharing, networking and having fun!
