How does music affect a test subject’s brain? That was just one of the questions on the minds of the people who came to the LIBC public day to hear Rebecca Schaefer’s talk, as well as to hear from other top researchers about their investigations into music. The five woodwind players in the Calefax reed…

How can Staphylococcus aureus bacteria subvert the host immune system?

Part of our social contact is currently online, with no physical proximity. Does digitalisation mean that we are losing an effective way of making contact with one another? This is what Reinoud Kaldewaij will be studying with a Veni subsidy from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). 'An issue that will…

Bibi van den Berg, Professor of Cyber Security Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), has been interviewed by Financieel Dagblad (FD) and BNR Nieuwsradio about the considerable shortage of cyber security specialists in the Netherlands. Van den Berg warns of a brain drain,…

Hunter-gatherers acquire their food through complex gender-specific foraging techniques for a relatively stable and diverse supply of energy. New research indicates that this specialisation by boys and girls starts at a very young age. Most likely, this enabled the human species to evolve much larger…

How can we speed up the transition from large cities to a circular metropolis? This is the question that Leiden students and former students Elsemieke, Fabian and Eveline are getting their teeth into. They and seventeen other young academics are taking part in the National ThinkTank and they have four…

Even embryos can become embroiled in an evolutionary arms race with another species. Leiden biologists demonstrate this with larvae of the rosy bitterling that parasitize the gills of freshwater mussels. They published their research on February 19 in PNAS.

A neuro-ecological perspective on adolescent prosocial development

Nanomaterials can pass much further along the food chain than was previously thought. The particles can change shape and size in each organism, enabling them to pass on to the next one in the chain. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences discovered this accidentally when using a novel…

Psychologist Ellen de Bruijn studies the effects of hormonal fluctuations on behaviour and on the brain over a woman's life course. With an ERC Consolidator grant, she and 3 PhDs and a postdoc will further her EEG research on the different stages at which girls and women experience strong hormonal f…

Health workers have always sought ways to fight disease in vulnerable groups in the population. It is now clear that such research also benefits more prosperous countries. African worm infections and innovative thermometers have shown Leiden researchers how to fight diseases of affluence and keep health…

How humans and rats cohabit the cityscape and what consequences this has for both sides of the conflict?

Promotor: E.F. Smets Co-promotor: J. Geml

Does roadside management in the mid-west USA increase invertebrate diversity similar to practices in Europe?

Promotor: G.A. van der Marel, Co-promotor: D.C. Codée

What is the function of the insect serosa?

Regular users of cannabis are less aware of their own mistakes, and they are not good at creative thinking. This is the conclusion drawn by psychologist Mikael Kowal from his research on the effects of cannabis. PhD defence 6 October.

Lecture, Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series

The bachelor's programme in International Studies is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Ko Voskuilen was among the very first batch of students to follow the study, and Sophia Healy graduated this summer. How do they look back on their time at the university?

Young people influence one another to take greater risks, although it's not quite that cut and dried. This is what development psychologist Jorien van Hoorn discovered. Peers also have a positive influence on one another, an aspect that has so far been under-researched. PhD defence 12 January.

What are the main factors associated with the stranding of the two seal species? What are the factors influencing the prevalence of disease in the two species? Which human-related factors influence the populations of the two seal species?

PhD defence

Although there has been an increase in the research into brain function and dysfunction in relation to stress and emotions, there are still many unanswered questions.

Tiny selenium particles could have a therapeutic effect on ischemic brain strokes by promoting the recovery of brain damage. Pharmacologists, including Alireza Mashaghi from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research discovered that selenium nanoparticles inhibit molecular mechanisms that are responsible…

The updated MRI scanner at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) will become operational on 29 September. The new version is faster and better than the current model.

In the future, physicians may be able to identify dementia much earlier than they can today because a computer algorithm will be able to predict from brain scans how our memory is going to develop.

Eveline Crone, professor of neurocognitive developmental psychology at Leiden University, has been awarded the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize for Behavioural and Social Sciences by KNAW.

How can we implement the technique of pharmacological resting-state fMRI to improve the diagnosis of dementia?

What is the relation between brain development and social and cognitive development across childhood, adolescence and adulthood?

Psycholinguistic research

The LIBC is actively involved in training and education in the field of brain and cognition.

What is the effect of training children to exercise self-control? Niko Steinbeis has been awarded a major European subsidy to find the answer to this question. The innovative aspects of this research are the target group, an individual approach to the training and examining the child brain the scann…

How can we help children and adults to acquire better reading comprehension? Paul van den Broek and his colleagues at the Brain and Education Lab are searching for an answer to this question by investigating reading and the related brain activity.

The Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition is a network that stimulates interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and expertise on topics related to brain and cognition and focuses on science valorisation and outreach. Its research members come from a broad and diverse spectrum of specialized academic…

Are you interested in the neurocognitive and biological roots of learning, behaviour and emotions in children? If so, the programme in Applied Neuroscience in Human Development might be the specialisation you are looking for.

The Brain and Education lab is a research group in the Institute of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Our group is embedded in the Educational Sciences research program and the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition.

The Horizon 2020 project Sybil-AA (Systems Biology of Alcohol Addiction) focuses on modeling and validating disease state networks in human and animal brains for understanding pathophysiology, predicting outcomes and improving therapy in alcohol addiction. Alcohol addiction, the most severe form of…

On the 12th of October, Fatemeh Tabassi Mofrad successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Fatemeh on this achievement!

How does the brain develop from birth up to adolescence? And why are young people given so little information about the development of their brain? Two new websites of the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition provide an answer.

Conference

Eveline Crone, Professor of Neurocognitive Development Psychology at Leiden University, has been elected as the new Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC). She will be in charge of ERC activities in the domain of Social Sciences and Humanities.