I am a PhD candidate in Professor Stéphanie Le Hellard's research group, affiliated with the Department of Clinical Science and the Bergen Center for Brain Plasticity. The goal of my project is to identify biological markers that dynamically change with response to psychotherapy and predict long-lasting treatment outcomes. We aim to better understand processes underlying the response to psychotherapy and treatment failure in a large-scale research effort, integrating clinical, genetic, epigenetic, and brain imaging data.

Academic article

• Höffler, Kira Daniela; Katrinli, Seyma; Halvorsen, Matthew W. et al. (2025). Optimizing genetic ancestry adjustment in DNA methylation studies: a comparative analysis of approaches. (external link)
• Bäckman, Julia; Wallert, John; Halvorsen, Matthew W. et al. (2025). Association Between Polygenic Risk and Symptom Severity Change After Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. (external link)
• Strom, Nora I.; Gerring, Zachary F.; Galimberti, Marco et al. (2025). Genome-wide analyses identify 30 loci associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder. (external link)
• Halvorsen, Matthew W.; Schipper, Elles de; Bäckman, Julia et al. (2024). A burden of rare copy number variants in obsessive-compulsive disorder. (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Blok LER, Boon M, van Reijmersdal B, Höffler KD, Fenckova M, Schenck A. Genetics, molecular control and clinical relevance of habituation learning. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2022 Dec;143:104883. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104883. Epub 2022 Sep 21. PMID: 36152842.

Dror E, Fagnocchi L, Wegert V, Apostle S, Grimaldi B, Gruber T, Panzeri I, Heyne S, Höffler KD, Kreiner V, Ching R, Tsai-Hsiu Lu T, Semwal A, Johnson B, Senapati P, Lempradl A, Schones D, Imhof A, Shen H, Pospisilik JA. Epigenetic dosage identifies two major and functionally distinct β cell subtypes. Cell Metab. 2023 May;35(5):821-836.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2023.03.008. Epub 2023 Mar 21. PMID: 36948185; PMCID: PMC10160009.