Dr Annerine Roos, a researcher at Stellenbosch University's (SU) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS), was invited to present her research on the link between behavioural disorders and brain connectivity at two international conferences recently, one in Dallas and the other in Geneva.

As a member of the research team at the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Unit for Anxiety and Stress Disorders at SU and the University of Cape Town, Roos is involved with various projects investigating the psychobiology and treatment of anxiety disorders.

She received the 2016 Poster Grant Award from the TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviours to present at their annual conference held in Dallas in April.

This award follows the publication of an article entitled "A comparison of brain volume and cortical thickness in excoriation (skin picking) disorder and trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder) in women" in an Elsevier journal. Roos was the first author of the paper on the study done in collaboration with the University of Chicago. For this particular study, Roos compared brain data of patients and controls to differentiate groups.

In June, she travelled to Geneva to present a poster, entitled "Brain Network Connectivity in Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence", at the annual meeting of the Organization of the Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). The OHBM is the primary international organisation dedicated to using neuroimaging to discover the organisation of the human brain.

Roos said she was greatly honoured to be invited to present her research to international audiences. "One works behind the scenes without always knowing what the impact of one's research might be."

She explained that research on these disorders is often not a high priority compared to disorders with a higher prevalence in the global burden of disease. "But we still need to investigate these issues to be able to alleviate suffering," she said. "The conference in Dallas was an excellent opportunity to seek for answers in collaboration with experts, patients and family members during the interactive sessions."

In between these two conferences, Roos made time for a mission outreach project of two weeks to Nigeria. In 2015 she obtained an Honours Degree in Ministry from the Team Impact Christian University (USA). "This enables me to reach out to communities and do missionary work. I also work with medical doctors based at local universities to determine medical and teaching needs and establish where and how we can collaborate to address some of the most pressing needs."