Haixia Gu (古海霞)

Haixia Gu (古海霞)

Haixia Gu is a Ph.D. student in Genetics at the School of Life Science, Central South University, China. Her research is dedicated to precisely defining and measuring psychological stress, while exploring its critical role in the development and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Specifically, she aims to:

  1. Comprehensively define and reliably quantify psychological stress, and

  2. Investigate its causal relationships with psychiatric disorders using both phenotypic and genetic approaches.

With a multidisciplinary background spanning psychology and genetics, Haixia has received comprehensive training in experimental psychology, psychological assessment, cognitive neurobiology, bioinformatics, genetics, and epigenetics. Her experience includes designing and executing psychological studies in laboratory settings, as well as performing genetic analyses in large-scale cohort datasets such as Lifelines, UK Biobank, and NESDA.

🔥 News

:  🎉🎉 Haixia presented “GWAS meta-analysis in more than 500,000 Europeans identifies 10 loci for stressful life events and shows causal links with neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic disorders” at the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG), Glasgow, Scotland. [Poster]

Haixia presenting her poster at the 2026 World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics in Glasgow

:  🎉🎉 Haixia co-authored a preprint investigating the role of basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and stress responses in Chinese adults.🔗 Read the preprint

:  🎉🎉 Haixia, as first author, released a preprint proposing a unified definition of psychological stress and introducing the Cognitive Integration Model (CIM), which specifies the stress-generation and stress-handling processes.🔗 Read the preprint

:  🎉🎉 Haixia presented “GWAS meta-analysis in more than 500,000 Europeans identifies genetic loci for stressful life events and their causal links with neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic disorders” at the Behavior Genetics Association (BGA) Annual Meeting, Amsterdam, Netherlands. [Oral]

Haixia giving an oral presentation at the 2026 BGA Annual Meeting in Amsterdam

:  🎉🎉 Haixia, as the first author, published an article in Psychoneuroendocrinology titled “Physiological and psychological responses to acute stress: A meta-analysis of 171 studies of the Trier Social Stress Test including 8452 healthy adults”! 🔗 Read the paper

:  🎉🎉 Haixia started a two-year academic visit at the University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, with financial support from the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC).

:  🎉🎉 Haixia co-authored a paper titled “Advancements and Prospects in Human Organoid Phenomics: A Comprehensive Review (in Chinese)” (人源类器官表型组学), published in SCIENTIA SINICA Vitae (中国科学: 生命科学). This experience was a valuable opportunity to explore and better understand experimental biology. 🔗 Read the paper

🚩 Projects

Research Projects (Lead Researcher)

  1. GWAS Meta-analysis of Stressful Life Events in Over 500,000 Europeans
    • Status: Completed; manuscript in preparation; conference abstract published.
    • Identified 13 genetic loci associated with stressful life events and investigated their genetic correlations and potential causal relationships with neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic disorders.
  2. Polygenic Risk for Stressful Life Event Exposure in Relation to Cumulative Stressful Life Events and Health: A Longitudinal Study in the NESDA Cohort
    • Status: Completed; manuscript in preparation.
    • Investigated associations between polygenic risk for stressful life events and longitudinal trajectories of stress exposure and mental and physical health outcomes.
  3. Unified Definition of Psychological Stress and the Cognitive Integration Model
    • Status: Completed; manuscript in preparation.
    • Proposed a unified definition of psychological stress and a Cognitive Integration Model that specifies the stress-generation and stress-handling processes.
  4. Preliminary Development and Validation of the Multidimensional Integrated Stress Scale (MISS) in Chinese Adults
    • Status: Completed; manuscript in preparation.
    • Developed the Chinese version of the Multidimensional Integrated Stress Scale (MISS) based on the Cognitive Integration Model and conducted preliminary assessments of its reliability and validity.

📝 Publications

Psychoneuroendocrinol 2025
sym

Physiological and Psychological Responses to Acute Stress

[Main findings]

  • Physiological measures exhibited stronger and more consistent effect sizes in response to the TSST than psychological measures.
  • Strong correlations appeared within domains, while associations between physiological and psychological domains were weak.
  • Cardiovascular measures showed promise as reliable endophenotypes for stress-related genetics and disease risk.
Compr Psychoneuroendocrinol 2022
sym

Salivary Cortisol Responses to Acute Stress

[Main findings]

  • The TSST effectively induces stress response as measured by salivary cortisol change.
  • Forty samples is the minimum for detecting robust salivary cortisol responses.
  • The speech topics tested did not significantly alter salivary cortisol responses.
  • Males have higher salivary cortisol responses than females in the TSST.
  • Males had higher salivary cortisol levels than females in the TSST at both baseline and peak.
Sci Sin Vitae 2024
sym

Advancements and Prospects in Human Organoid Phenomics

[Main findings]

  • Human organoids are three-dimensional (3D) in vitro cell cultures that closely replicate the cell types, tissue architecture, and key features of human organs.
  • This review summarizes current methods and recent advances in applying phenomics to the study of human organoids, and discusses future directions for their development and application.
Autism Res 2021
sym

Atypical Gaze Patterns to Facial Feature Areas in Autism Spectrum Disorders

[Main findings]

  • Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show atypical gaze patterns when looking at others’ faces compared to neurotypical individuals.
  • This paper examines the role of age and culture on pattern of gaze abnormalities in individuals with ASD.
  • Results show that reduction of gaze on eyes in ASD is stable across all ages and cultures, while increase of gaze on mouth emerges as individuals with ASD get older.

🧑‍🏫 Academic Conferences and Awards

  • 2026.10: GWAS meta-analysis in more than 500,000 Europeans identifies 10 loci for stressful life events and shows causal links with neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic disorders. World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG). Glasgow, Scotland. (Poster)
  • 2026.06: GWAS meta-analysis in more than 500,000 Europeans identifies genetic loci for stressful life events and their causal links with neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic disorders. Behavior Genetics Association (BGA) Annual Meeting. Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Oral)
  • 2023.12: (Excellence Award) Psychological Stress as a Phenotype: Updated Definition and Quantification. Academic Annual Meeting of the Behavioral Genetics Branch of the Chinese Genetics Society and the 9th Academic Forum on Psychiatric Genetics – Young Scholars Forum. Changsha, China. (Oral)
  • 2023.11: (Outstanding Poster Award) Psychological Stress as a Phenotype: Updated Definition and Quantification. The 4th International Symposium of Human Phenomics and the 5th Human Phenomics Conference of China. Shanghai, China.
  • 2021.12: A New High-Throughput Method to Induce Robust Psychological Stress. The 60th Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. San Juan, United States.
  • 2021.10: The Trier Social Stress Test-Electronic Screen (TSST-ES) Induces Acute Stress Responses Efficiently. The 23rd National Conference of Psychology. Fujian, China. (Oral)
  • 2021.09: Salivary Cortisol Responses in the Trier Social Stress Test: Effects of Speech Topics, Sex, and Immunoassay Methods. The 20th World Congress of Psychophysiology. Sichuan, China.
  • 2021.04: (Excellent Paper Nomination Award) The Effects of Speech Topics, Immunoassay Methods, and Sex on Salivary Cortisol Responses in the Trier Social Stress Test. The 6th National Symposium on Emotional and Health Psychology. Sichuan, China.

📖 Education

  • 2022.09 – present: Ph.D. in Genetics, School of Life Science, Central South University, China. Expected completion: December 2026. Supervisors: Chao Chen and Chunyu Liu.
  • 2024.11 – 2026.07: Joint Ph.D. student, Interdisciplinary Center for Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation (ICPE), Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Supervisors: Catharina Hartman and Harold Snieder.
  • 2019.09 – 2022.07: M.S. in Basic Psychology, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, China. Supervisors: Jingjing Zhao and Chunyu Liu.
  • 2015.09 – 2019.07: B.S. in Applied Psychology, School of Public Health and Management, Chongqing Medical University, China.

💻 Internships

  • 2019.12 – 2020.05: Internship at the Department of Psychiatry, University-Town Hospital of Chongqing Medical University (重庆医科大学附属大学城医院), China.