Chantal Martin Soelch

Chantal Martin Soelch is a Swiss clinical psychologist, academic, and author. She is a Professor in Clinical and Health Psychology, and Vice-rector for Teaching, Continuing Education, Gender Equality, and Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).

Martin Soelch is the author of the book titled, Reward and Dependence: A Psychological and Neurobiological Analysis of Reward Mechanisms and Their Role in Dependence, and the author of several book chapters including Le Trouble Déficit de l'Attention avec ou sans Hyperactivité (TDAH) chez les étudiants universitaires and is most known for her research in psychology spanning the areas of clinical neuroscience and psychobiology with a particular focus on experimental psychopathology, and on the examinations in psychosomatics, stress, brain's reward system, and mindfulness for mental and psychosomatic disorders.

Martin Soelch is the Editor in Chief of Cortica, and the Associate Editor of BMC Psychology.

Education
Martin Soelch enrolled at the University of Fribourg in 1990 and completed Bilingual study in Clinical Psychology, General Psychology, and Neurobiology in 1996. From 1997 to 2000, she undertook her Ph.D. research in Psychology at the Swiss research institute, Paul Scherrer Institute, in Villigen and examined the reward system of the brain using neuroimaging in a translational project. She then graduated with a Diploma in Psychology and Neurobiology in 1997, and a Ph.D. from the University of Fribourg in 2001. Later, she obtained Habilitation from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zurich in 2011.

Career
Martin Soelch started her academic career after her Ph.D. as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of General Psychology and Methodology Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel, Basel in 2000. Having held that position for five years, she joined the Center for Pathological Gambling University Hospital of Adult Psychiatry at the University of Lausanne, and served briefly as a Senior Scientist there. Afterwards, she was appointed as a Research Fellow in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program of the National Institute of Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health. She worked then academically and clinically from 2006 to 2012 at the Clinic for Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatics at the University Hospital Zurich. Since 2012, she has been holding an appointment as the Professor in Clinical and Health Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Fribourg.

Martin Soelch held an appointment as the President of the Department of Psychology at the University of Fribourg for two years starting in 2012. She was also appointed the Vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at the University of Fribourg in 2015, a position that she held for three years, and has been serving as the Vice-rector of the University of Fribourg since 2019.

Research
Martin Soelch has authored numerous publications including, journal articles, and book chapters. Her research works and projects on clinical neuroscience and clinical and health psychology include examining the brain’s rewards system, exploring dopamine functions in fibromyalgia, and investigating the psychobiological factors for psychopathology. Additionally, she has worked on the development of a mobile app for older individuals with chronic pain, and has investigated the effects of mindfulness-based interventions on the cerebral reward system.

She participated in research on Ayahuasca from an indigenous perspective to neuroscientific investigations, and has investigated the phenomena of extraordinary experiences.

Clinical neuroscience
Martin Soelch conducted research on the neural responses to reward in participants with opiate addiction. Having conducted research on dopamine alterations in fibromyalgia patients, and the brain’s reward mechanisms, her research works focus on inspecting if the dopamine alterations can be restored by mindfulness-based interventions. Her research also encompasses an assessment of how acute experimental stress influences reward processing at neural and behavioral levels. In her experimental studies on stress and reward mechanisms, she evaluated the association between cognitive performance and reward in an fMRI study, and determined the role of cognitive load, and stress on the striatal reactivity to monetary reward.

Another aspect in Martin Soelch’s research studies includes integrating PET, and fMRI measures to investigate if mindfulness-based interventions can restore the altered dopamine (DA) function in patients suffering from Fibromyalgia (FMS), in terms of reducing pain and improving mood symptoms as well as DA reward responses. In her studies exploring the role of serotonin in the central dopamine systems, she has presented evidence on SNP rs1062613 in the serotonergic receptor, SNP rs1062613 serving a key role in modulating the availability of striatal dopamine D2/D3 receptor, together with a group of researchers. While proposing a way that assessed the complexity of family risk of major depression, she integrated neuroscience with self-determination theory, as well as fMRI, and ambulatory assessment approach. Her research reported the correlation between daily life self-reported data and fMRI data regarding reward, and stress experiences, and analyzed how it can be employed to characterize between healthy control subjects, and family history depression subjects.

Martin Soelch has focused her research on examining the changes in dopamine function in depression as well, presented evidence of dysfunction of the dopamine system in depression, and illustrated blunted response to reward signals. Moreover, her 2017 research study concentrated on patients with FMS patients and without MDD reported varied patterns of DA releases, and highlighted that these can be distinguished from each other based on neurobiological levels. She discussed the mechanisms associated with the changes in brain reward circuit for chronic pain conditions, especially fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), and shed light on the significance of dopamine in terms of the pathophysiology of FMS. In the 2020s, she worked on the development of an app called, Ecological Monitoring and Management App (EMMA) that supports self-management of chronic pain in older adults with chronic pain.

Mental illness disorders
In an investigation of post-traumatic stress disorder, and reward mechanisms, Martin Soelch noted an alteration of the reward processing systems in remitted PTSD patients. Furthermore, she suggested that the promotion of self-efficacy in tortured refugees acts as an effective strategy in the management of distress. She conducted research on eating disorders, such as Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa. Her studies have analyzed the food estimation patterns in women with Bulimia nervosa (BN), and indicated that they tend to be higher than healthy controls (HC), and lower than anorexia nervosa (AN). Moreover, while inspecting altered circulating endocannabinoids during the acute and weight-restored phases in anorexia nervosa, she considered the biopsychophysiology of anorexia nervosa, and her collaborative work suggested a deregulation of the endogeneous endocannabinoid anandamide. In addition to that, she studied intergenerational violence transmission, inspected the mother-child dyads, reported that physical abuse subjected to mothers during childhood was linked with IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) in adulthood, and highlighted how it was associated with anxiety, and depression symptoms in children as well.

Books

 * Reward and Dependence: A Psychological and Neurobiological Analysis of Reward Mechanisms and Their Role in Dependence (2002) ISBN 978-0820456324

Selected articles

 * Martin-Soelch, C., Leenders, K. L., Chevalley, A. F., Missimer, J., Künig, G., Magyar, S., ... & Schultz, W. (2001). Reward mechanisms in the brain and their role in dependence: evidence from neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies. Brain Research Reviews, 36(2-3), 139-149.
 * Martin-Sölch, C., Magyar, S., Künig, G., Missimer, J., Schultz, W., & Leenders, K. (2001). Changes in brain activation associated with reward processing in smokers and nonsmokers: a positron emission tomography study. Experimental Brain Research, 139, 278-286.
 * Martin‐Soelch, C., Chevalley, A. F., Künig, G., Missimer, J., Magyar, S., Mino, A., ... & Leenders, K. L. (2001). Changes in reward‐induced brain activation in opiate addicts. European Journal of Neuroscience, 14(8), 1360-1368.
 * Martin-Soelch, C., Linthicum, J., & Ernst, M. (2007). Appetitive conditioning: neural bases and implications for psychopathology. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 31(3), 426-440.
 * Martin-Soelch, C. (2009). Is depression associated with dysfunction of the central reward system?. Biochemical Society Transactions, 37(1), 313-317.