Post docs

My name is Marieke Bos and I am a postdoc in the Brain and Development center of prof. Eveline Crone. I received my PhD in Clinical Psychology in 2014 from the University of Amsterdam. My research aim is to better understand the underlying mechanisms to explain the development and maintenance of psychopathology. After finishing my PhD that focused on the plasticity of emotional memory, I moved to Leiden to study the development of psychopathology in children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Focus on Emotions lab. In March 2016, I joined the B and D center. My current work focuses on longitudinal analyses of brain structure and function in relation to psychopathology.

My name is Jizzo Bosdriesz. I studied Health Sciences at VU University and obtained my PhD at AMC - UvA, studying socio-economic inequalities in smoking cessation and the association with tobacco control policies. I am currently involved in a large longitudinal study on the differential susceptibility of children to environmental and parenting influences. This includes among others: EEG, MRI, behavioral observations, and a parent intervention.

My name is Mark Bouts. My research interests range over the following areas: improving clinical diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of patients with brain injury or neurocognitive disorders using imaging-based algorithms. I obtained my PhD in Medical Imaging at the Image Sciences Institute of the University Medical Center Utrecht, where I worked on improving multi-parametric MRI-based algorithms that describe and predict tissue injury progression following (experimental) ischemic stroke. Work I continued at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Charlestown, MA, USA. My current research aims at developing methods that enable – on an individual basis – the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with dementia using advanced imaging (including fMRI, DTI) and machine learning algorithms.

My name is Bianca van den Bulk and I am currently working as a postdoc within the Leiden Consortium on Individual Development (department of Child and Family Studies). I am involved in a longitudinal twin study including four age cohorts, aimed at testing the differential susceptibility theory by using an intervention (VIPP-SD). Families are followed for five years (six measurements). In addition, we study the (neurobiological) mechanisms of changes in development. The focus within the project is on the development of social competence and behavioral control in children and parental sensitivity. My personal focus is on EEG task and rest data, temperament, behavioral genetics and longitudinal analyses.

My name is Lisa Bylinina. I am a linguist working at LUCL on a VENI project called ‘Number Words’. The goal of the project is to gain a deeper understanding of the relation between how we talk about numbers and how we think about them. More formally: the relation between how grammar of natural language treats numbers — and human number cognition. I approach this task from a cross-linguistic, morphosyntactic, semantic, philosophical and cognitive perspectives.

My name is Olivier Colins and postdoctoral researchers at Curium-LUMC. In 2009 I received my Ph.D at Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogical Sciences. My research interests comprise (i) forensic screening and assessment, (ii) the relation between mental health problems and psychopathic-like traits, and adverse outcomes in antisocial youths, and (iii) the potential of neurobiology to differentiate within the heterogeneous population of antisocial youth more homogeneous subgroups of youths.

My name is Saskia Euser. My research focuses on environmental effects on children's social competence and behavioral control, with a specific focus on the role of children's daily life experiences, using ambulatory assessments. I am currently involved in a longitudinal intervention study with four different age cohorts, aimed at testing the differential susceptibility theory and studying (neurobiological) mechanisms of changes in development.

My name is Jessica Foster-Dingley. During my PhD I conducted and completed the Discontinuation of Antihypertensive Treatment in the Elderly (DANTE) study Leiden within the department of Psychiatry of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). The aim of this trial was to assess whether a four-month discontinuation of antihypertensive treatment in older persons, aged 75 years and over with mild cognitive deficits who were on antihypertensive treatment, improved cognitive functioning. Currently there is a strong need for individual dementia biomarkers for early diagnosis in the stages preceding significant cognitive loss. Structural and functional MRI changes in the brain might be one of the first signs associated with cognitive decline. Within the department of Radiology of the LUMC and Faculty of Social Sciences I will be collecting cognitive follow-up data of the DANTE population. With the aid of longitudinal MRI data and data on cognitive functioning from the DANTE study Leiden, I will study the sensitivity of MRI for prediction of future cognitive decline.

My name is Pascal Haazebroek. I am involved in PACO-PLUS (www.paco-plus.org), a collaborative European project combining robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology.
My aim is to implement theories of attentional mechanisms in the human brain (perception and action planning, feature integration and learning) into models that are suitable to control cognitive humanoid robots.

My name is Esther Habers. I performed my PhD research at the Child Development and Exercise Center of the University Medical Center Utrecht. The studies presented in my PhD thesis were in the field of juvenile dermatomyositis, which is a rare systemic autoimmune disease affecting the microvasculature of the skeletal muscle and skin. The covered topics were immunology, muscle imaging techniques, exercise and training physiology, and (epi)genetics. Since December 2014, I am working as internal thesis supervisor at the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology Unit. In my research I am especially interested in the circadian rhythm and the interaction between the brain and the nervous system, immune system, and endocrine system in chronic inflammatory diseases.

My name is Anne Hafkemeijer. I joined the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition in 2010. I obtained my research masters Cognitive Neuroscience and Medical Biology in Nijmegen. In 2016, I received my PhD at Leiden University on my thesis “Brain networks in aging and dementia” in the group of Prof. Serge Rombouts. My research interests are on functional and structural brain networks in healthy aging and diseases. Currently I work as MRI research coordinator and consultant in the LIBC support team to advise researchers on their MRI data analyses (questions can be directed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ).

My name is Elseline Hoekzema. I am a senior postdoc in the Brain and Development lab. I joined the lab early 2015 with a Veni grant awarded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to examine the effects of pregnancy hormones on the human brain. I first started working on this topic during her PhD, and in my postdoctoral work I have continued to examine the impact of endocrine factors on the brain. To study this, I use various neuroimaging approaches (sMRI, fMRI, ASL, DTI, MRS) combined with hormonal, behavioral and physiological measures. Before focusing on neuroendocrinological topics, in my main PhD projects I investigated treatment-induced neuroplasticity, brain morphology and activity in psychiatric disorders (primarily ADHD) as well as the effects of aging on different neurotransmitter systems in rats. In my current research, I examine how pregnancy alters the structure of the human brain

My name is Daniël Kleinloog. I have done my PhD at the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) in Leiden. For my PhD, I further developed pharmacological challenges as model for psychosis. We performed studies with THC and ketamine to induce psychomimetic symptoms in healthy volunteers. For the THC model, we were able to reduce these symptoms with the antipsychotic olanzapine. In my thesis, I also analyse different outcome measures that can be used to quantify the effects of the pharmacological challenges, including RS-fMRI.

My name is Ahmed Mahfouz. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher working on a joint project between the Delft Bioinformatics Lab (TU Delft, Delft) and the Department of Radiology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC, Leiden). My research project is about Brain Imaging Genetics, a field focused on linking imaging phenotypes to genetic causes. I am mainly working on linking spatially-mapped genetic data from the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences to mouse and human brain MRI scans, for better understanding of neurological diseases (e.g. Autism and Migraine).

My name is Marieke Niesters. I work as a Post Doc researcher at the department of anesthesiology in the LUMC and cooperate with the LIBC on projects addressing the effect of pharmaca and anesthesia procedures on resting-state fMRI.

My name is Sandy Overgaauw and I received my PhD in 2015 at Leiden University. The aim of my PhD-project was to understand developmental changes and individual differences in empathic concern and the relation with social reorientation from a brain and behavioral perspective. Currently I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Clinical Psychology department at Leiden University. My research interests are focused on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of social performance monitoring and learning in social anxiety and psychopathy.

My name is Leticia Pablos. My research interest is in the interdisciplinary fields of psycho and neurolinguistics. I am interested in the subconscious mechanisms present in the comprehension of phenomena on the syntax-semantics interface such as negative polarity items and in the formation of long-distance dependencies of different kinds such as wh-dependencies, topic-clitic dependencies and pronoun-antecedent dependencies. To study these phenomena I use both behavioral techniques and electrophysiology.

My name is Sabine Peters. I received my Master's degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 2010 from the University of Amsterdam. During my two internships I investigated the neural basis of insomnia (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience) and hippocampal volume in depression (King's College London). I also worked as an MRI-assistant in the UvA Cognitive Neuroscience group. In my PhD project, supervised by Eveline Crone and Cédric Koolschijn, I investigated cognitive, affective and neural development in children and adolescents. My post-doc project focuses on development of self concept and prosocial behavior in adolescence.

My name is Jolien Rijlaarsdam. I obtained my PhD at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychology and the Generation R Study, Erasmus MC-University Medical Center Rotterdam. I am currently affiliated with the Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University. Here, I will examine the neurobiological (hormonal and neural) correlates of fathering.

My name is Sanneke van Rooden and I am a post-doc researcher at the department of Radiology at the Leiden University Medical Center and Faculty of Social Sciences in Leiden. I have completed my Ph.D. in 2015 on Alzheimer’s disease imaging using ultra-high field MRI (7 Tesla) at the department of Radiology at the LUMC. I have studied Psychology at the University of Utrecht and specialized in Clinical Neuropsychology. I am interested in exploring which MRI techniques and cognitive tests are able to detect the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease and sporadic cerebral amyloid angiopathy (both diseases caused by deposition of amyloid-beta in the brain). In my current project I investigate patients with subjective cognitive impairment and mild cognitive impairment (potentially early stages of Alzheimer’s disease) using functional MRI.

My name is Mischa de Rover. Currently, I am working on functional imaging of small brain nuclei, like the dopaminergic ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra, at high field strength (7 Tesla).
In addition, I am appointed by the LIBC to advise researchers on implementing their study at the research dedicated MR facility, as well as on MRI data analysis. Together with Wouter Teeuwisse, he is responsible for general support related to the MRI scanner and training researchers to safely work in the MR environment. All scanner-related questions can be directed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

My name is Julie Rutten.

My name is Johanna van Schaik. I am a postdoctoral researcher working with Maartje Raijmakers in the Brain and Education Lab of Leiden University. My project is funded by a grant from the NRO (Netherlands Initiative for Education Research), a part of the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). Utilizing EEG and behavioral methods, we are investigating young children’s formation and updating of science concepts in hands-on learning contexts. I conducted my PhD with Sabine Hunnius, Harold Bekkering, and Ivan Toni, at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior, of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

My name is Roberta Sellaro and I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Cognitive Psychology Unit, under Lorenza Colzato' s NWO- Vidi grant (2013). In 2013, I obtained my Ph.D in Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of Trento (Center for Mind and Brain Sciences; CIMeC).
My research interests include the use of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), to explore the neural mechanisms of social decision-making and cognitive control in the human brain. I also enjoy investigating the role of specific factors, as for example drugs use, food supplementation, environmental factors and individual differences in modulating
cognitive performance.

My name is Laura Steenbergen. I completed my Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience (cum laude) at Leiden University and am now working as a postdoc in the cognitive psychology department under the NWO VIDI grant of Dr. Lorenza Colzato. I am particularly interested in neuromodulatory effects on cognition, and focus on the acute effect of tyrosine on cognitive control. I am mainly interested in finding ways to optimize people’s cognitive functioning in healthy ways. Therefore, my research includes different methods to enhance cognitive functioning, such as food supplementation (tyrosine, tryptophan) and techniques such as transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

My name is Sandra Thijssen. I performed my PhD research at the Department of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in collaboration with the Generation R study at the Erasmus Medical Centre. Since August 2015 I am affiliated with the Centre for Child and Family Studies at Leiden University. Here, I will examine the neurobiological (hormonal and neural) background of fathering.

My name is Anna van ’t Veer. During my doctoral years I studied moral psychology, with a special interest in cognitive and affective processes underlying deception and deception detection. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Child and Family Studies at Leiden University, where I focus on the evolutionary, biological (hormonal) and neural correlates of fatherhood.

My name is Monique van Velzen. I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Anesthesiology in the LUMC and I cooperate with the LIBC on projects addressing pain perception, and the effect of analgesics and anesthesic compounds on the brain.

My name is Sandra Voorthuis. I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for child and family studies, Leiden University

My name is Steven van der Werff, post-doctoral researcher at the department of Psychiatry of the LUMC. I received my MSc. Degree in Clinical Psychology in Leiden. My Phd project focused on neurobiological mechanisms of resilience to stress. Techniques I use consist mainly of neuro-imaging techniques MRI / fMRI.

My name is Lara Wierenga. My post doctoral research focuses on modeling brain development with longitudinal study designs in order to get a better understanding of genetic and environmental effects on brain development. Both structural MRI and DWI data are analysed to investigate brain changes in children and adolescents using mixed model regression analysis, machine learning and complex network analysis. Of particular interest are the influence of puberty related factors on brain development and how these may differently interact with growth in males and females.

My name is Jurriaan Witteman. I am a post-doctoral researcher interested in how the human brain decodes (emotional) speech. Recently, I have also developed an interest in neuropsychopharmacology and addiction. I study these topics using neuroimaging methods.

My name is Sharon Zmigrod. I am a post doctoral researcher at the cognitive psychology section. Recently, I received my PhD from Leiden University. My dissertation focused on feature integration across perceptual modalities and action planning. My interests concern the cognitive processes underlie multimodal perception and action planning and the effects of these processes on cognitive control and flexibility, as well as conscious and unconscious processes using behavioral measures, EEG, and modeling techniques.

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