Newsletter 93. In the name of science

Newsletter 93 I N TH IS ISSU E Alternative ways of funding research projects: Interactive double interview between Etienne Gaudrain and Anita Wagner 2 Keeping on track: igniting sparks with your scientific story Interview with Christian Keysers 5 Fast-paced social interactions at MIT: An interview with Romy Wichmann 7 Cool links 8 Revealing the tip of the… tongue: How second language learning can be improved using articulography An interview with Martijn Wieling 9 BCN Lunch #3: Scientific Inventions – How the patent process influences your academic future 11 Alumnus Column A song of wise and higher: A game of chairs 13 The human brain project: Lost in dynamic networking 14 Re-introducing a new staff writer: Annika Luckmann 15 After work: André Aleman 16 The Project Management Course revisited 17

2014 BCN New Year’s meeting 18

Grand stuff 21 PhD and other news 22 Promotions 23 Cheeky theorems 32 Colophon 32

In the name of science…

March 2014

BCN - SCHOOL FOR BEHAVIOURAL AND COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCES

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B C N N E W S L E T T E R 93 | M A R C H 2 014

Alternative ways of funding research projects: Interactive double interview between Etienne Gaudrain and Anita Wagner Nowadays, funding research projects has become an important part of researchers’ lives. A couple of well-known grants are VENI, VIDI, VICI, and ERC grants. However, more ways of funding projects do exist. Etienne Gaudrain and Anita Wagner, two postdocs at the UMCG, found other ways to fund their projects. Their grants allowed them to work on a more applied project, in the case of Etienne, and on her own ideas, in the case of Anita. Finding other funds can be challenging, so we hope their experiences will open up a whole new field of possibilities for funding the project of your dreams! Etienne Hey! Do you want coffee? Anita Hey, yes, nice, thank you Etienne Ok, it’s ready. I’ll tell you my story.

I’m an engineer, but switched radically from physics to human auditory perception when I started my PhD… nearly 10 years ago (!). Just when I finished my PhD I moved from France to the UK for a first postdoc, which was then followed by a second postdoc. After 5 years on the island, I very much felt the desire to come back

to continental Europe: with kids, England became a bit scary, and auditory research wasn’t as exciting as when I moved in because a lot of people were retiring and nobody seemed willing to replace them. Anita So do you feel that now you are where you should be? Etienne Yes, when a position opened here at the ENT department, I jumped on it. The dynamic is very positive, people are enthusiastic, the relationship with the clinical team is unmatched, the work environment is really amazing! And the Dutch society is so much more European than the British one, so apart from the language, I really feel at home here!

>> And the Dutch society is so much more European than the British one, so apart from the language, I really feel at home here! <

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>> There are also languages I would like to learn, Basque and Dutch are on the top of the list, in that order, unfortunately :). <

Now what is your story? Anita My story... I studied Psychology and Languages, after a while I gave up some languages and focused on Phonetics and Psychology. I did my PhD in Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, which is where I started appreciating the fact that Dutch people enjoy speaking in many languages, and then I moved to London for a postdoc. At that time, I was working on native versus non-native speech perception. I tried to figure out how much of what we perceive in speech correlates with the acoustic signal and how/whether one can be trained to perceive a second or third language as if it were your native one. At a point I made the, hopefully preliminary, conclusion that one cannot get rid of the perceptual accent one gets with the mother tongue, and this is thus the end of the correlation between the acoustic signal and perception. Then I started looking for another angle to address the same questions, and got interested in how people learn to understand speech through a cochlear implant (CI). Amazing construction such an implant, isn’t it? Etienne Oh yes, almost as amazing as the normal ear! And it’s funny that I come from psychophysics rather than psycholinguistics, but I also initially came to CIs as a means to access the auditory system in a different way to answer very fundamental questions. But working with CIs also means you work with patients, and that provided a very strong motivation to make my research more applied. And that’s why I started to look for partnerships with industry, which ultimately led to this 2+2 grant with Advanced Bionics, a cochlear implant manufacturer. Anita 2+2 stands for 2 years + 2 years? Etienne Yes. 2 years funded by the industry and 2 years funded

by the Faculty of Medical Sciences. Anita So what is your project about? Etienne The project is about individually optimising the settings of CIs in order to improve perception of speech in noisy situations. The outcome of cochlear implantation varies greatly from one individual to another, and optimisation is limited by the time that can be spent in the clinic. We will develop methods to achieve this optimisation partly automatically and in a reasonable time. The immediate goal is to improve the fitting, but this may later extend to developing new training methods for rehabilitation, which, I think is the focus of your project? Anita My project is about lexical access in CI users, thus about how people learn to process the unnatural sounding signal from the CI and to map it onto their mental representations that they have built up throughout their life based on natural speech. The signal from CI sounds weird and there are huge individual differences in how well people re-learn to treat it as speech. There is this analogy to non-native speech perception, where you have the situation that what you hear does not match your own representations on several levels: you misperceive sounds, words, and often end up with several potential interpretations for what you heard. These non-native difficulties are not easy to overcome. CI listeners are presented with their native language, but what they hear does not necessarily resemble what they know about their language. So they need to learn and re-train their perception, just like highly motivated non-native listeners can, but I want to believe that CI listeners have higher chances to succeed. So is your research now funded by industry? Etienne My own research is currently funded by Deniz Başkent’s

VIDI and is less directly applied. The 2+2 grant will let me hire a PhD student to expand my work towards more applied questions. How is your project funded? Do you also have links or plans with industry? Anita My project is funded by a Marie Curie fellowship that I received last year. It is a European fellowship, and is great because it allows me to work on my own ideas, to learn about new fields like CI technology and rehabilitation, and to apply my previous experience in this new, and more applied field. As a postdoc you do not always get the chance to work on your own research ideas, and to expand you knowledge across disciplines. So I feel extremely lucky. What other areas or disciplines would you like to study when you get the chance? Etienne I’d like to learn more about psycholinguistics and phonetics, as this would also be a way to make my research more useful. And this would also imply learning more about cognitive psychology in general. And then statistics and machine learning. And if I have the chance, I’d like to learn EEG and fMRI. I already have some experience, but I’m far from independent on these methods... What about you? Is there any skill you’d like to acquire or develop further? Anita Yes, there are many skills I would like to develop further. I would enjoy improving my programming skills. There is this C++ course at the RUG, really neat, I hope I can get through with it, but it requires a whole lot of time. Physiology of hearing is also something I am really keen on learning more about. There are also languages I would like to learn, Basque and Dutch are on the top of the list, in that order, unfortunately :). And time management, I would like to learn how to get

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everything done in a day that I intended to have done in a day. Etienne You moved in with your family. Was there any special support from the EU? Marie-Curie actions are presented as ‘family friendly’ but at the same time fiercely promote mobility. How are these two things made compatible practically? Anita Marie Curie actions are family-friendly because they do acknowledge the fact that moving from one country to another requires more financial means with children than when you move alone. You need a bigger flat, you might need to arrange for international schooling, and you also want to keep in touch with your family, so this generates more travel costs, especially if you travel as a family. This is important in particular because many MC fellows return to their home country after their fellowship, and then have to start there again. Was it difficult for you to move from the UK? Etienne The UMCG made it easy for me to move in terms of financial support, and the University Housing Office, although unable to find us long term accommodation (they don’t have so much experience with families of four), was extremely helpful to find us gap accommodation while we were waiting for our house to become free. What I find difficult in my position is to switch from one project to another. I’m co-supervising two PhD students aside from my own research and my biggest challenge right now is to fit everything in my agenda. Someone warned me when I was finishing my PhD that the PhD was the easy part and that it was only getting worse from there, and five years later, it hasn’t stopped proving more and more true every year... The current challenge is to supervise my own student while fighting against the daemons of the past (namely

a couple of papers from my previous positions that still need to be written...)... all this while securing my own funding, so having limited visibility on the stability of my own position. What do you find difficult in your position, and what challenges do you foresee in your near future? Anita I know what you mean, during the PhD one can focus on one thing at a time, but then suddenly there are all these different tasks that require your attention, and not all of them seem related. But there is also something nice in this diversion. I think that going through your PhD puts things into perspective, and working on many different tasks at the same time makes all these projects appear smaller. What I see as the biggest challenge coming up is the fact that, as you mentioned, MC actions promote mobility, but there are studies showing that what a young researcher, after a postdoc or two, actually needs in order to find a stable, possibly even tenured position is a network that is built up over time. These studies show that young researchers who stay at, or return to their home university are more likely to find a permanent position than these nomadic researchers of whom I believe there are more and more around. A stable position is very much desirable at a certain point, especially if you have children who start going to school, and who do not like to always be the new kids at school. Etienne Yes, and I used to think that I could always switch to another path, do teaching, go back to engineering... But now I have the feeling that I’ve gone too far to come back, and that from here, the only way is forward. So... I feel pretty lucky I love what I do! Anita Yes, that is nicely said, but despite this, I still want to believe that the possibility to change paths is always

there. There is sooooo much out there. Well, I am aware that I cannot become a pilot anymore. Still, knowing this makes me like my work even more. Etienne Well, I know someone who’s a pilot. Actually, I know two! Maybe Groningen is also the place-to-be if you want to become a pilot on the side! ■■ BY FREDERIEKE VLIEG ■■ PH O TO S BY D E N I Z BA S K E N T, E T I E N N E G AU D R A I N , A N D A N I TA WAG N E R

>> The current challenge is to supervise my own student while fighting against the daemons of the past... <

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Keeping on track: igniting sparks with your scientific story >>I NTE RVI EW WITH CH R ISTIAN KE YSE RS In recent years, mirror neurons and their role in empathy have attracted much attention in both scientific and popular circles. Mirror neurons are involved in executing an action, but are also active when you see, hear, or know that someone else performs a similar action. One of the researchers busy with investigating the role of mirror neurons in empathy is Prof. Christian Keysers. About a year ago he received an ERC grant (the 3000th grantee!) which he will use to study emotional empathy. More specifically, he will investigate the phenomenon that brain regions involved in feeling an emotion are also involved when witnessing that emotion in others. A key question in this field is whether the same brain region is activated during the observation of emotions of others and experiencing emotions yourself, as neurons in this region function as mirror neurons. Or do some neurons in that region respond to emotions of others and other neurons respond to your own emotions? This question is the core of Christian Keysers’ study.

How did researchers discover the existence of mirror neurons? The first discovery that some motor neurons respond during action observation occurred by chance in Italy, when the team members grasped food in order to hand it to a monkey to test what happens when the monkey grasps. The team wanted to study how the monkey controlled his own actions, but noticed that some of the cells also fired when the monkey saw them do the same. Later, when I joined the team, we systematically tested these properties not just when the monkey sees an action, but also when the monkey hears an action,

or knows that an action happens behind an occluding screen. This showed how much the motor system is involved in perceiving what others do.

What is the advantage of having mirror neurons? Why have they developed? What we know is that if you interfere with the activity of regions containing mirror neurons, you become less able to perceive the actions and emotions of others. It seems that being able to ‘mirror’ the actions of others in your motor system allows you to get an inside view of what goes on in the other person. Because mirror neurons are multimodal cells, and we also need cells that combine sensory information with motor programmes to control our own actions, it might be the case that these neurons originally developed for us to control our own actions. The social benefits may have come later, and added to their usefulness.

Is it possible to develop them later in life? Or is the amount of mirror neurons set at birth? About the neurons themselves, we know little. I hypothesized that all it takes for a mirror neuron to develop is that you perceive your own actions. If you, for instance, never played the piano, and start for the first time to play a melody, you’ll witness that each time you press a certain key, you hear a certain tone. This association, described in the wonderful work of Eric Kandel which inspired me so early in my career, will

lead to the strengthening of synapses between neurons representing the sound and neurons causing the action. After doing that for a while, the next time you hear someone else play the melody, these strengthened connections from sound to action will activate the motor programme you used to produce these same sounds. This kind of Hebbian learning was first just a hypothesis I made, but later, studies have shown exactly that. People that never played the piano only activate their auditory cortex when they hear piano melodies. If they train for 5 hours to play a melody, hearing that melody later automatically triggers activity in the motor cortices. This fMRI brain activity suggests that you basically wired up a new mirror neuron.

Can mirror neurons be switched on and off? For example sometimes people that commit crimes are judged non-accountable by psychiatrists. Are mirror neurons switched temporally off in those people? We just had an important paper published (Meffert et al., 2013, in Brain) in which we see exactly that. Psychopathic criminals, when they see the pain of another, recruit their own pain very little – that is, at least, what our fMRI data suggest, namely, that they activate brain regions involved in their own pain much less when they view the pain of others. But their empathy is not ‘broken’. My wife Valeria Gazzola had the idea to ask them to watch the movies again, but this time to empathize with the victim of the pain. Now their empathy looked normal – brain activity in their pain regions was as strong as in normal people. So it looks like they have empathy ... when they want to.

>> With the science of mirror neurons, we start to understand how we relate to others <

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It is not strange to imagine why Christian Keysers got interested in mirror neurons and their role in empathy. He studied both psychology and biology, and the study of mirror neurons combines aspects of those two study fields. His PhD was in the field of social neuroscience and his supervisor, David Perrett, was and is his source of inspiration.

the big picture when their eyes start to glaze over when you describe the experiment. Other experiments, on the other hand, ignite a spark in people’s eyes, and that is a great indicator that this is a question that really matters.

The subtitle of the book is ‘How the discovery of mirror neurons changes our understanding of human nature’, can you explain this?

One of the things Christian learned from David Perrett was that it is a privilege, and an amazing gift from society, to be able to devote your life to researching the mind. In return, researchers have to deeply devote themselves to understanding the truth about nature. This means that you must not try to impress other people with your papers but instead try to describe the science as best and honestly as you can. This involves attracting people’s attention by writing a good story but also to dig deep – deeper than most reviewers would ask you to do – and be your worst and sharpest critic. Perhaps it was this lesson which made him write a successful book for non-scientists.

I think that humans are deeply social. By ‘deeply’, I mean that the core of what we care about, and what determines our lives, is our relationship to other people. It’s the core of our social nature. With the science of mirror neurons, we start to understand how we relate to others. The nuts and bolts of what it means to be around other people, and how it affects us. The good and the bad consequences of how our brain makes us relate to others pops out of this research. I wanted the general public to understand really how we do the science, so that they can draw their own conclusions on how that changes their ideas about human nature.

You wrote a book ‘The empathic brain’, is it difficult to translate scientific knowledge to the layman?

Not for a while… Eric Kandel once said that he went to a parent day at the school of his little son, in which each parent needed to explain to the whole class the kind of work they do. Everyone was fascinated by Eric’s work. Two years later, the same event happened, Eric spoke again, and his son looked very embarrassed. “But Dad”, he said, “that is what you did two years ago!”. I don’t want my little Julia to be as embarrassed and having to tell me: “Daddy, but that is what you wrote two years ago!”. I should probably work for another decade, to have something really new to say. Maybe then I will…

It’s a challenge – especially, because you become a leading scientist not because you are a good writer, but because you are good at making experiments. But it’s a very inspiring challenge too. Writing a book for the general public means that you see your own work from an important perspective – why does it matter? This perspective sometimes gets lost in daily research practice, because you make an experiment, and some details remain unclear, so you are tempted to explore these details in a follow-up experiment. This gets you deeper and deeper into details, and when you speak to lay people, you realize that you get side-tracked from

Are you planning to write more books in the future?

■■ BY FREDERIEKE VLIEG ■■ PHOTO BY VALERIA GA Z ZOL A

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Fast-paced social interactions at MIT: An interview with Romy Wichmann I couldn‘t find a lot of details about your Rubicon proposal on-line. Could you explain what it is about? Yes, they never post a lot, only the short Dutch summary. My project is about the neurobiological mechanisms of social interactions. We know that social interaction is an essential and highly integrative behavioural task and that many major psychopathologies, like autism, schizophrenia or depression have significant impairments in the social domain. However, little is known about the neurobiological underpinnings of social behaviour and social deficits associated with these disorders. I will use different optogenetic tools and a new in vivo calcium imaging technique to try to provide additional information about the fundamental neurobiological principles mediating social interaction which might provide useful information to understand social deficits in humans.

You mention a broad spectrum of pathologies in combination with a general, highly dimensional construct (social interaction). Could you envision for me what a potential explanation in terms of neurobiology would look like? With what kind of paradigms and animal models will you study these relationships? We want to know how the brain is influencing social interactions. I am using two different social interactions tasks, the 3-Chamber sociability task and the JuvenileIntruder Task to disentangle the neurobiological circuits that control or modulate interactions in these tasks. By

using optogenetic tools I can essentially turn on (or off) certain groups of neurons in distinct regions in the brain and detect differences in their social interaction behaviours due to activation or silencing of these particular group of neurons. With the in vivo imaging technique I can directly watch neurons in a certain region doing their job, by means of calcium imaging, during the social interaction tasks and analyze whether and how these neurons are involved in this particular behaviour.

What is research like at MIT? Is it comparable to the RuG at all? Fast paced would be the first thing that comes to mind. It’s very up to date, very cutting edge. They are able to attract the best people and a lot of novel techniques are either invented here or the people who invented them will be recruited to MIT. A recent example is Kwanghun Chung, the brain behind „CLARITY“ [also see the Cool Links section on page 8]. There are a lot of possibilities at hand here and great minds to collaborate with. Clearly, great minds can also be found at the RuG and establishing the right collaboration was also often possible. The biggest difference might eventually be the overall density and intensity of research at MIT. That sounds fantastic. What principles of MIT would you instill in your own lab, if you were to start one after your postdoc? Or are the expensive tools, the great people, and the money the greatest reasons for success?

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Expensive tools are definitely not the sole reason for success. I still believe that you can do great research without them, you just need clever ideas how to prove your theories. But sometimes, expensive tools make that proof easier. And what you definitely need are great people (…I just heard an invited speaker here at MIT say, “great people can make bad technology work but bad people will ruin a great technology”.) and money (money kind of boils down to expensive tools).

Why do you think that your Rubicon proposal won? Mmh, good question. I guess NWO thought it was a good proposal with solid research ideas and feasible ways to execute them. And of course a little bit of fancy techniques and possibly an MIT bonus.

Looking back at your career so far, what were the essential ingredients to come as far as you have? Determination, perseverance, and luck. I still think luck is the major component. Sometimes it’s just being at the right place at the right time. And maybe having a dream.

It‘s interesting that you mention the ‚dream‘ part. Having a vision. I noticed that this kind of enthousiasm is often correlated with success. So what makes you enthousiastic? What is your dream (in research)? Making an impact in science. I would like to contribute something to our knowledge about the brain, something that brings us a little bit closer to understanding this intriguing part of our body.

What was your research about during your PhD? During my PhD I worked on two different projects. I started out studying sex differences in chronically stressed animals. Later, I conducted fundamental research in the field of emotional learning and memory consolidation. I investigated the influence of glucocorticoids on appetitive and aversive taste memory consolidation.

Cool links

What future directions would you like to pursue?

> On why a Nobel prize winner decides to ban Nature and Science:

Research related, I am mostly interested in motivation, emotions, and stress. How are those things controlled and modulated by the brain and what goes awry when psychiatric diseases develop. Career related I am really open for anything, whatever let’s me pursue my research related directions.This could be either my own lab somewhere in the world or an industrial position.

> A useful overview of software for visual psychophysics and cognitive neuroscience (commercial, open source, cross-platform):

■■ BY ROBIN MILLS

Stumbled upon very cool or useful BCN/Science related things (e.g., youtube, articles, demos, websites) that you think are worth sharing to the BCN community? Let us know, and we’ll include a selection of it here!

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/howjournals-nature-science-cell-damage-science#

http://www.hans.strasburger.de/psy_soft.html > Social cognition study finds that chimps can use gestures to communicate while hunting:

http://news.gsu.edu/2014/01/16/study-finds-chimps-can-usegestures-communicate-hunt-food/ > V1 is multimodal! New study reports evidence that V1 integrates visual motion + locomotion in mice:

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n12/full/nn.3567.html > New technique called CLARITY that makes brains (and other organs) translucent and allows visualization of functional structures:

http://www.nature.com/news/see-through-brains-clarifyconnections-1.12768 > Critical article at The Economist explaining why scientific publishing in its current form isn’t self-correcting anymore and thereby hinders progress:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientiststhink-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

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Revealing the tip of the… tongue: How second language learning can be improved using articulography >>AN I NTE RVI EW WITH MARTI J N WI E LI NG In Dr. Wieling’s office, on a perfectly normal Friday afternoon, I found myself reading aloud stories about groceries, squirrels, and battles between the sun and the northern wind. With my mouth full of tiny sensors. Fortunately, Dr. Wieling had convinced me of the purpose of this strange situation, conveying enthusiasm for both his new project and his machine, the articulographer. Dr. Wieling finished his PhD cum laude in 2012, as a member of BCN. His dissertation dealt with new quantitative methods to investigate dialect variation. Recently, he received a VENI grant for a four-year project on pronunciation in second language learning. His main aim is to evaluate how tongue and lip movements contribute to the production of certain speech sounds in peoples’ native language compared to a second language. To this end, he uses an electromagnetic articulographer: a device which uses magnetic fields to track the three-dimensional position of a number of sensors that are attached to the tongue, lips, and jaw. As he will do with all his participants, Dr. Wieling let me read aloud some written stories both in English and my native language - Dutch in my case. Using the three-dimensional data, he is able to track my tongue and lip movements over time as I pronounce the words. This way, he can compare the movements I make when speaking Dutch or English, and relate them to each other. That day not only did I take part in Dr. Wieling’s experiment, I had the chance to interview him.

Why do you want to compare tongue and lip movements in peoples’ native language versus a second language? “Generally, and often unwished, people have an accent in their second language to a more or lesser extent. This is not remarkable, given that in learning a second language, such as English in primary or high school, very little time is spent on

how to achieve a native-like pronunciation. The problem of course is that you have no clue as to what is going on inside the mouth of a native speaker of English, because you cannot see it. Learners of a second language are left to guess. All they can build on is the sound, and this is what the learner is trying to match. Interestingly, speech sounds can be approximated in a number of different ways by using your tongue and lips. As an example, Dutch speakers usually try to approximate the English /th/-sound by saying a /t/ or /d/, while German speakers usually use a /s/. In fact, for pronouncing the English /th/ you need to put the tip of your tongue almost between your front teeth. This, however, is not a speech sound in Dutch or German, and therefore the accompanying tongue movements are not familiar to speakers of these languages. One of the open questions I wish to address with my research is how second language learners try to approximate the speech sounds of the second language. A speaker may think the speech sound in a second language is quite different from those in the native language, and revert to making different tongue movements, hopefully resulting in a new speech sound. Alternatively, a speaker may believe a speech sound in the second language is quite like one that is used in the native language, and map this sound, and accompanying movements, onto the known one. Of course, from just audio material we will not be able to answer such a question precisely, but with the

>> You have no clue as to what is going on inside of the mouth of a native speaker of English, because you cannot see it. <

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tongue and lip movements that the articulographer registers in three-dimensional space, we will. This will inform us of how a learner treats the second language, and how he, unconsciously, perceives the relation between his native language and the new one.”

So I can appreciate the articulographer as a window into my mouth, and into the cognitive basis for speech sound mapping. Now I’m curious to know whether I, as a second language learner, could somehow benefit from the insights the articulographer provides. “I think you could indeed benefit from the literal ‘insights’, and this is another focus of my research. The articulographer is reasonably portable, and I intend to bring it along to several Dutch and German schools. I will collect tongue and lip movement data , but I will also take it a step further by visualizing the movement data and presenting them to the participants. Using such a version of the ‘talking head’, people will be able to view their own tongue as they make the speech movements in a second language: a thing that is normally not possible! If we then, additionally, show the ‘talking head’ of native speakers of that language, the learners will have a much clearer view of which movements are necessary to produce a certain speech sound, and how far off they are. Unfortunately, an articulographer is quite costly and schools will generally not have the funds to purchase one. So for future implementation of the knowledge I expect to acquire, we will probably need to use other means.”

Do you already have any ideas on how visualized tongue and lip movements could be put to use in a more practical manner? “Luckily, there are actually two options I would deem fit for this. The first is to use the collected data to calculate the ‘typical’ Dutch or German tongue, and to visualize these movements instead of the learner’s own. The learner can then be shown a native English speaker’s tongue movements, and the typical movements of speakers of his native language. Because the learner is likely to produce tongue and lip movements that are similar to the typical

ones, the benefit of being able to compare the movements in the native and the new language is not lost. A second way is to stick with visualizing the learner’s own tongue and lip movements, not based on articulographic data, but on the audio produced. I always record participants’ speech using a microphone while measuring their movements with the articulographer. Based upon what I hope will become a very large data set, I could relate speech sounds to movement. I love working with people, but the numbers and doing statistics are what really get me very excited, so this would be the kind of thing I would very much like to do. And of course, it would be a large practical advantage if we could model the tongue and lip movements based on the produced speech sound alone. The articulographer would then not be necessary anymore, and schools would only have to use a microphone and some software to show learners their own tongue and lip movements.”

These are quite a number of interesting things you could do with the data you will be collecting. Do you have any other future wishes for the use of the results of your research with the articulographer? “I will be focusing on, and comparing, Dutch and German speakers who are learning English, taking British English as the standard. Obviously, this is most practical for me as I work in Groningen and Tübingen, but of course, Dutch and German people do quite well at speaking English already. This is not surprising, as English, Dutch and German are all part of the Germanic language family. Nowadays we learn English quite early in life, and we are confronted with a lot of spoken English via the media. I foresee a larger benefit for speakers of languages spoken at other places in the world to whom English is a much more ‘exotic’ language. Likewise, I expect visualized tongue and lip movements to really be of help if a speaker of Dutch wishes to learn a much less familiar language. Another topic that I would find very interesting to study using articulography is bilingualism. Does, for example, a Belgian speaker use a different set of speech sounds than a Dutch speaker when speaking Dutch? Or in other words, does the Belgian

No physical discomfort resulted from the experiment, and sensors stuck to your tongue do nothing but make you lisp a little at the beginning.

bilingual hold two different mappings for his French and Dutch speech movements, or does he map the sounds of each language onto the other, resulting in a sort of mixture that is applied in both languages? We will be able to answer such questions, and many more, using the articulographer, and ultimately learn what implications speaking more than one language actually has.” Based on my interesting visit with Dr. Wieling, there are several things I feel I can safely say. One: Don’t judge a machine on its looks. The articulographer isn’t very large, and it has some weird boxes (from which the magnetic fields are sent), so it does not look as impressive as, say, an MRI scanner. However, this machine is capable of recording data that will probably change the way we think about speech and second language learning. Two: Don’t judge the scientist on what he tries to put into your mouth. Dr. Wieling admits that attaching the sensors to participants’ tongues with some sort of superglue is not his favourite part of the job. “It’s always kind of weird to ask people to open their mouth and then start to put things in there. I’ll be happy when I’ve hired my research assistant.” I am assured that Dr. Wieling’s greatest interest is in the very many questions he will be able to address with his articulographic data, and that he doesn’t hold any dentist-related ambitions. Three: ‘Squirrel’ is a rather odd word to pronounce. Try it. Squirrel. Squirrel. ■■ BY SANNE BREDEROO ■■ PHOTOS BY SANNE BREDEROO, MARTIJN WIELING

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BCN Lunch #3: Scientific Inventions – How the patent process influences your academic future When talking about PhD projects, especially outside academia, many of us are probably frequently asked about the societal relevance of our research. Universities are increasingly judged on their performance in the field of knowledge transfer. But how do we add social and economic value to our research, and does it influence our academic future? One way is to turn research ideas into products that can be patented and put on the market. Thinking in terms of products and inventions can be a challenge for researchers. “Scientists do not always realise the added value of their ideas. Some ideas appear so obvious and trivial, while people working at Business Generator recognise the uniqueness and potential of these ideas.”, Prof. Van Ooijen states on a website dedicated to connecting researchers with businesses (http://www.businessgeneratorgroningen.nl). To discuss the link between research and inventions that can be put on the market, we organised the third BCN lunch at the Gasfornuis on November 26th. We were very pleased to see that around 30 BCN PhD students showed up to eat delicious sandwiches and listen to the invited speakers Hans Hektor and Esar van Hal discuss scientific inventions.

Translating knowledge to value Our first speaker, Hans Hektor, has a background in Biology, after which he completed a PhD in Biotechnology at the University of Groningen, where he continued working as a postdoc. Nowadays, he is Technology and Venture

Manager at Business Generator Groningen (SBGG), a non-profit organisation dedicated to assisting in the value creating process of science. As a PhD student, you can contact SBGG to get support in the procedure of applying for a patent. SBGG is also experienced in starting up small businesses and marketing scientific ideas. Both the RUG and UMCG stimulate entrepreneurship, wherein their collaboration with SBGG provides assistance to researchers who are interested in applying for a patent. Together they propose that assisting in a patent process is an incentive for economic growth as the impact of your PhD research could extend beyond the academic environment in the

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>> CO N T I N UAT I O N O F B C N LU N C H #3: S C I E N T I F I C I N V E N T I O N S – H O W T H E PAT E N T P R O C E S S I N F LU E N C E S YO U R AC A D E M I C F U T U R E

industrial world. For example, the long tradition in transplant medicine in the UMCG has resulted in a patent for a pump system that flushes out the internal organs during donor surgery. Within the Neurosciences, Prof. J.A. den Boer holds a patent on a new augmentation strategy in the treatment of depression.

Realizing the added value of scientific ideas On the website of SBGG, Prof. Van Ooijen (RUG) writes that “scientists do not always realise the added value of their ideas. Some ideas appear so obvious and trivial, while people working at Business Generator recognise the uniqueness and potential of these ideas.”

From invention to patent Hans gave us an overview of the process from the first pitch of the invention to the application submission. He mentioned that it is important to realise that you can’t publish first and then ask for a patent. Once the idea is out there, it’s not new anymore. Furthermore, a patent has only national acceptability. This means that the invention you patented in one country can still be used in another country. Intellectual property by means of a national patent can be gained from scientific inventions, which are new, inventive, applicable, and reproducible. A patent is also necessary to exclude others from commercial use. Copyrights, trademarks, registered designs, trade secrets and plant breeder rights are also examples of intellectual

property. As Hans put forward from a recent NRC newspaper publication, universities are more focused on patenting nowadays, to prevent overtaking of their researchers’ ideas. However, we should not be overenthusiastic since diagnostic methods, surgical methods, therapies, discoveries, and computer programmes are not patentable.

From patent to prototype: Innovations in prosthetic walking The second speaker was Esar van Hal, a PhD student from the Center of Human Movement Sciences who works in the field of innovations in prosthetic walking. He is currently working on a balance mechanism controlled by the hip to compensate for the missing ankle in persons with no leg(s). He walked us through the steps of the patenting process for this new lower leg prosthesis, which was invented by his supervisor Bert Otten. Regarding the steps of preparation, design, realisation, and evaluation, they are now at the realisation and testing prototypes phase, in which they are working together with orthopedic instrument makers.

Interaction between university and industry From his own experience Esar stated that good contact with the company, and interaction between university and industry, is very important. However, he suggested that it would be very useful to decide how ‘large’ the project should be, so that you do not involve people

unnecessary. “Realising an idea takes time and patience, but stick to your own ideas”, was one of the pieces of advice Esar shared with us. In addition, he discussed the importance of embedding, meaning the way mathematical ideas are translated into real life prototypes.

Adding economic and societal value to research and education – Who’s responsible? Both speakers gave the impression that the UMCG and RUG are successful in getting bureaucracy away from the researcher, thereby motivating researchers to work with industrial

partners. There are good connections to industry, and SBGG can help with the application process. Knowledge valorisation, meaning the use or application of an object, process, or activity so that it makes money, can also be seen as a social responsibility of the research community. Finally, working together with industrial partners can be a valuable additional experience to your PhD project. So who knows, maybe you will have the next patentable idea during your research? ■■ BY HELEEN HOOGEVEEN ■■ PHOTOS BY BARBARA NORDHJEM

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>>ALUM NUS CO LUM N

A song of wise and higher: A game of chairs Although I’m writing this alumnus column, I have never identified myself with alumni before. In that sense, I’m coming out of a closet. I am a research scientist, and of several professions I have tried, it is the best by far! Academia can be a whimsical patroness though. You are ideally supposed to enter the field as a promovendus and exit it as emeritus. Yet, a majority of people wander through a network of interconnecting passages, sometimes never to emerge; such kind can often be called alumnus. More worrisome is another type, the bogus, that uses a backdoor to get in. Academic careers sometimes remind me of the scene in Kill Bill where Beatrix has to climb long stone stairs to reach a martial arts master – if that doesn’t ring a bell, you may prefer Kung Fu Panda, which contains a similar scene. Most of you will realize how it compares to getting a Ph.D. The road may be long and hard, and the goal may seem distant at times, but you learn a lot about yourself and your particular trade on the way. Fortunately, the end is clear and welldefined: the Ivory Tower is waiting at the top, and a joyous bunch of people who made the journey before you are waiting to hail you with some deserved fanfare. In that context, BCN is your local tour operator. I made it there, and am one of those people cheering you in. But now let me be frank and reveal that once you enter the Ivory Tower, you will find that you are on a floor with more stairs to explore. They

tend to be shorter, but where they lead is usually much less clear. To other stairs, likely. I have been told that at some point there is an enchanted path you can follow, the Tenured Track, that will eventually lead to an idyllic penthouse where you will be endowed with your very own professorial chair. There is lore of other ways leading there as well, but fate diverted me down a corridor to another tower. So far, I have visited five keeps, a few in the Netherlands, including Groningen, and a few abroad. At the moment I find myself in Nottingham, imitating its most legendary son Robin Hood: stealing knowledge from the wise to benefit the ignorant (equating that to myself, for convenience). I encourage you all to try alike for a while. Don’t go up the first ladder you see, but have a look around the place. You will learn that your own Ivory Tower is part of a much bigger Snowy Castle. The great benefit of visiting its other rooms and gardens is not so much that they are necessarily more beautiful or comfortable. The point is that from there you have a fresh perspective on the tower you came from. You will meet other travelers that have been in mythical places. Moreover, you cannot really value any room if you don’t have something to compare it to. Some people sadly get lost on the way and never find their way back, and some happily choose not to stay; there are many exits one can take. Lately, a few people have started slipping in through backdoors too, sometimes riding fast

elevators to the top floor. At my own alma mater, I remember a case involving one Professor Buck; in the Groninger part of the Castle, a dark lord Stapel sneaked around. Somehow, these folks don’t quite get that the true value is in the journey, not in the destination. Admittedly, that it is an almost platonic notion that I regularly need to remind myself of as well. In my view, some of the trespassing is caused by gatekeepers to our bastion who lure smoothtalking crooks in rather than guard the doors. Yet, despite the flaws, I believe academia will conquer. It has been around for more than two millennia. The formula works; a present day fad is not going to impact that factor. Somewhere overseas, dragons are rising that free slaves and

topple masters. That last book hasn’t yet been written, but let’s choose our allegiance and carry that banner proudly! “My name is Dave Langers, I am an alumnus, and you are welcome to join me.” There, I said it. Epilogue: This has been a fairytale in which I perhaps took the metaphor a bit too far, making it as shallow as it is deep. The thing about wisdom is that we all must suffer to accumulate it ourselves. If you doubt your decision to book onto this stairway to heaven, take some time to enjoy the journey whenever you can. But know that I find it a marvelous road to travel! ■■ BY DAVE L ANGERS ■■ PHOTOS BY DAVE L ANGERS

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The human brain project: Lost in dynamic networking Wouldn’t it be great if we could simulate an entire human brain? We would be able to understand human cognition, we could find solutions to the many brain diseases, we would finally know what consciousness is!

The European Union recently launched a 1 billion Euro mega-science flagship project that aims to do just that: simulate an entire human brain, at many different levels of complexity. On Friday, January 24th 2014, NWO organized a meeting in The Hague to inform Dutch researchers about possibilities to participate in the Human Brain Project (HBP; www.humanbrainproject.eu). Five researchers from Groningen went to this meeting to get more concrete information as well as to hear how they might be able to participate in this innovative science project.

Unfortunately, after an afternoon of talks, it was still not really clear how interested researchers might join, either because it’s not yet clear when calls will open, what their topics will be, nor how much money will be available within such calls. For example, there is a notion of “associate members”. It is unclear what those are, and it may even be the case that being an associate member of the HBP might mean that you will not be able to compete for future funding in the HBP – the EU’s ways are inscrutable … Currently in its so-called “ramp-up phase”, the HBP still has many loose ends. Many decisions about its concrete implementation still have to be decided on. In fact, it seems that even the funding and its distribution after the ramp-up phase of the project still have to be decided on by the European Commission. Ultimately, of course, the Groningen group (and other researchers) came to hear ‘what’s in it for us’. Unfortunately, as a result of the many open questions, we still don’t know (even the Groningen researcher (NP) who’s already a task leader still doesn’t know). There was a first open call last October to submit projects (350 submissions (25 from NL, 2 from Groningen)), of which only about 15 will be awarded ;-(. A next call may be announced by the end of 2014. So, a lot of questions remain.

A few useful tidbits of information did come out: • NWO has promised to distribute the presentations that were given during this information meeting, and to inform the attendees of any important new developments. • NWO has set up a FLAG-ERA (European Research Area) with national science foundations of other countries. Together, they will open a call in 2014 for projects (but only 0,75MEuro (i.e. three PhD projects) for Dutch projects). • They will also communicate relevant NWO-funded projects to HBP. Therefore, a tip for aspiring Rubicon, VENI, VIDI, or VICI applicants: it seems NWO would like to be able to connect new projects from other funding instruments to the HBP. It may therefore not hinder to mention in your application how your ideas and projects would connect to the HBP. (The idea was described as an entire flotilla escorting the flagship.) The NWO representative who is responsible for this is Moniek Lijster ([email protected]). • The project initially launched as an ICT project, building upon the ‘Blue Brain Project’ (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/). That explains the strong focus on computing and imaging. Nevertheless, there are also large chunks about cognition, modeling, and medical science that are expected to become more important from 2015 onwards.

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>> CO N T I N UAT I O N O F T H E H U M A N B R A I N P R OJ E C T: LO S T I N DY N A M I C N E T W O R K I N G

• Given that this is an ICT project, there was also a talk on high-performance computing. This was the most entertaining talk of the afternoon, and one word stuck: “Jungle-computing”. It was a description of how to best combine very many different computing resources (cell-phones to large exa-scale (10^18; www.exascale.org) clusters) for large-scale projects (Hmmmm, or maybe it does describe how the brain computes?).

Re -introducing a new staf f writer : >>AN N I K A LUCK MAN N

Will the project succeed? As one of the presenters concluded: “It’s a dream”. One can interpret this negatively, as in “In your dreams”, or positively, as in “Science is all about posing seemingly impossible questions and dreaming that one day we will know the answer”. During the tea break, we discussed whether it would be useful to set-up a “Groningen Brain Project” which would keep interested researchers informed, follow developments in the big HBP, and maybe even mobilize local resources. This seems particularly important because one of the main messages of NWO this afternoon was that an important strategy for becoming part of HBP is making sure that your research is indispensable for them, and making sure that they know. Interested researchers can send an email to: Michiel Hooiveld, [email protected] ■■ FRANS CORNELISSEN ■■ N ATA S H A M AU R I T S ■■ MONICQUE LORIST ■■ MARIEKE VAN VUGT

While completing my Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience research master’s, I decided to become a writer for the BCN newsletter. I really enjoyed writing and conducting interviews, but after a while wanted to focus on my studies. So I left the newsletter in December 2012. Last September I started my PhD at the UMCG under the supervision of Deniz Baskent and Jacob Jolij. I am working on auditory perception and, more specifically, on the use of neurofeedback as a training tool for cochlear implant patients. After having been absent for the last four newsletters, I felt like all the interesting meetings and symposia I have been to in the last couple of months would make great articles. I therefore decided to join the newsletter team again and luckily the team once again welcomed me with open arms and I am very excited to be back.

■■ NICOLAI PETKOV ■■ P H O TO BY K AT H R I N LU C K M A N N D E LO P E Z

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After work: André Aleman Although we may be spending as much time with our colleagues as with our family, quite often we know relatively little about what they are up to after work. What do our colleagues do in order to relax, release the tension, and charge up the batteries for another day in the lab? We decided to get personal in the hope to surprise and inspire you! In this issue, we are glad to have Professor André Aleman talking about his life after work with us.

such as hallucinations in schizophrenia, is internationally renowned. His current research focuses on the cognitive and neural bases of apathy and was awarded an ERC grant for his project ‘Apathy in schizophrenia: time for a DRASTIC (Dual Routes to Apathy in Schizophrenia: Treatment, Imaging, Cognition) study’.

Who is André?

André after work As a professor, you must have much work to deal with every day. What would you do after work to relax? What are your tips to balance life and work?

André Aleman (1975) is a professor of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry at the Department of Neurosciences of the UMCG and the Department of Psychology of the University of Groningen. Shortly after having gained his PhD cum laude, he was awarded a VIDI grant by NWO to conduct research into emotional disorders in schizophrenia. In 2006 he was awarded a European Young Investigator Award by the European Science Foundation for research into decreased illness awareness in psychotic disorders. His research into psychiatric disorders of perception,

First, I usually ride home by bike which is 25 minutes of mental relaxation. Then I enjoy dinner with my family. Early evening I get our youngest two children to bed and have a chat with them about their day. I might listen to music or make music and I usually work one or two hours on my laptop in the living room. To balance life and work I think you should spend time with family and friends and do some sports activity every week. I spend very little time watching TV, so that saves time for more interesting activities. And I don’t work on Sundays.

Andre as a scientist

Andre with two sons on the beach

I heard that you are interested in kungfu (A surprise for me). How long have you been interested in that? What’s the most amazing thing of kungfu for you? Do you have any kungfu idols? Yes, I practice martial arts: karate and jiu-jitsu. Karate is Japanese, but was developed from Chinese Kungfu. I started at the age of 13. The most amazing thing is that you learn how to coordinate complex movement patterns with your body, it also involves focus and concentration (and a kind of mindfulness) and at the same time it can be used for self-defense! I don’t have any particular idols, but famous people like Bruce Lee and the old Japanese masters can be inspiring.

You have five kids, right? That’s a huge family, cool! What is your favourite way of spending time with them? I like to go to the beach with them, like last year when we went to Spain. They also like me to join them by bike to the city on a Saturday and then end up at McDonalds… ■■ BY LIWEN ZHANG ■■ PHOTOS BY ANDRÉ ALEMAN

Andre as karateka

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B C N Participation N E W S L E T TinEboth R 9 3parts | M is A Rplanned C H 2 0at 1 4once, so you know well in advance when the course is going to take place. By Frans Cornelissen and Natasha Maurits [Illustrations:]

The Project Management Course revisited > How do I realistically plan a project? > How do I keep an overview over my project? > How can I get other people to do their tasks? > How do I deal with unexpected extra tasks?

Project part II: Project Management Management Course Course part

As of Spring 2014, the PMC will be taught in a new way. To get you jump-started on your project, you will participate in the first part (PMC I) already within the first three months of starting your PhD. In PMC I you will learn – largely hands-on – what the requirements are to obtain a PhD degree, basic project management and planning skills, principles of time-management, prioritizing and some communication skills. Project Management Course part II

>H ow do I prioritize writing and publishing finished experiments over starting new ones? These are just some of the questions participants in previous project-management courses had. For most PhD students, at least some of these questions will be only too familiar. If not, you probably have only just started your project, you have not allowed yourself to think about these issues (yet), or you are the exceptional super researcher (rare, but not impossible). The Project Management Course (PMC) is one of those obligatory BCN courses. It costs you a lot of time (at least 2.5 days!) that you cannot spend on your actual thesis work. Is it worth your time? Let’s see what participants wrote afterwards: > “Did not expect much of the course, but actually learned many useful things”. > “It’s good to take time to think about your project and planning”. > “We got a lot of individual attention for our project and needs”. > “I learned a lot about the views and experiences of other PhD students”. > “Very useful course, wish I had done it sooner”.

By the end of your first year, you will participate in the second part (PMC II). Here, you will discuss the progress in your project, make a detailed plan for the next few months, and a plan for the remaining years of your project, Moreover, we will offer a number of additional tools and exercises to think about your project, your collaborators, and your own role in your project. On an individual basis, tutors will remain available for feedback for the remainder of your PhD project. Please contact Janine Wieringa (BNC office; janine.wieringa@ umcg.nl) to get more information, and to enroll in the course (if you have not yet received an invitation). Participation in both parts is planned at once, so you know well in advance when the course is going to take place. ■■ BY FRANS CORNELISSEN AND N ATA S H A M AU R I T S

Project Management Course part II:

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2014 BCN New Year’s meeting This year’s BCN New Year’s meeting took place on February 6. The now traditional forum discussion was organized, a large number of posters were presented, and the BCN New Year’s Lecture was held by Gáspár Jékely from the Max Planck Institute at the University of Tübingen. Last but not least, the following prizes were awarded:

Winner of the BCN Dissertation Award The winner of the BCN Dissertation Award 2012-2013 was Koen Haak. His dissertation, entitled “Computational neuroimaging of visual field loss” was chosen as the best of the 11 nominated theses. Koen was a PhD student at the Ophthalmology Department. There was an honourable mention for Jacolien van Rij, Reinhard Rössler, and Elise Verhagen, whose theses were also on the jury’s shortlist of the best dissertations that were defended during Academic Year 2011/2012.

Winner of the BCN Summary Award Esther Opmeer, former PhD student at the NeuroImaging Center, was the winner of the BCN Summary Award 2012-2013. Her summary was chosen as the best of the submitted summaries. The title of her dissertation is “Linking depression. Longitudinal and neuroimaging genetic studies in major depressive disorder”. All nominations are printed in the booklet “To the Point”. Please contact me if you would like to receive a copy.

Winners of the BCN Poster Awards Nienke Meulman (1st place), Selma Papegaaij (2nd place), and Menno Nijboer (3rd place) won the BCN Poster Prizes. The poster by Mandy Koopman was selected as the best master student poster that was presented during the day. Congratulations! ■■ BY DIANA KOOPMANS ■■ PHOTOS BY SANDER MARTENS AND MICHIEL HOOIVELD


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>> CO N T I N UAT I O N O F T H E 2014 B C N N E W Y E A R ’ S M E E T I N G


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>> CO N T I N UAT I O N O F T H E 2014 B C N N E W Y E A R ’ S M E E T I N G


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>>G R AN D STU FF University Amsterdam) and Prof. Oliver Tucha (RUG), awarded the € 1.000 prize to Robin for his master thesis titled “ Extending Biologicallyinspired Computer Vision: A Study on Applying Computer Graphics and Higher-order Statistics in HMAX”. Along with this prize, he was invited to publish a paper in the journal “Psyche and Brein” (“Mind and Brain”), and will get assistance in preparing a manuscript on his work for the journal “Scientific American”. Robin graduated summa cum laude in the BCN Research Master programme of 2011-2013, and is currently continuing his research in the Department of Experimental Psychology.

Honorary Doctorate As we announced in the previous issue of the BCN Newsletter, Prof. Paul Luiten received an honorary doctorate from Semmelwies University in Budapest on November 15th 2013. Prof. Luiten has done several BCN research projects in collaboration with Hungarian colleagues. He retired last year.

Staff writer wins national MSc Thesis award We are proud to report that our BCN Newsletter staff writer Robin Mills has won the national MSc Thesis Award for Cognitive Neurosciences! The jury, consisting of Prof Albert Postma (University of Utrecht), Prof. Astrid Kappers (Free

Cochlear implant research stimulated by EU… The European FP7 programmes is supporting the project “Mental and Auditory Representations of Speech in Cochlear Implants (CI)“(short MARCI). This Marie Curie fellowship has been awarded to Dr. Anita Wagner and is hosted by Prof. Deniz Başkent. MARCI will study how speech processing by CI users fits into the architecture of models of speech perception and lexical access. The aim is to investigate sources of individual variability in CI users by relating the findings to what is known about native versus non-native perception of speech. This project combines psycholinguistic methods with the engineering and medical expertise at the KNO Department of the UMCG. Also see the interactive double interview on page 2 of this Newsletter.

…and by cochlear implant manufacturer Advanced Bionics GmbH and the Graduate School of Medical Sciences will share the funding of a “2+2” PhD project led by Dr. Etienne Gaudrain and Prof. Deniz Başkent. Advanced Bionics is the second most important cochlear implant manufacturer in the world. The aim of the project is to investigate and develop new methods to optimize the settings of cochlear implants in order to facilitate voice identification and enhance speech perception in noisy situations. The project will mostly take place within the ENT department of the UMCG, in close collaboration with the Cochlear Implant team Noord Nederland (CiNN, http://www.ci.umcg.nl). The company will also be directly involved as research will also take place at Advanced Bionics’ European Research Centre in Hanover. More information Dr. Etienne Gaudrain, UMCG KNO http://www.rug.nl/staff/e.p.c.gaudrain/ Also see the interactive double interview on page 2 of this Newsletter.

Have you recently received any grants, prizes, or remarkable media coverage? Please let us know ([email protected]) and we will try to cover it here!

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>>PH D AN D OTH E R N EWS Hora Finita BCN expects that all PhD students and promotors have logged in to Hora Finita to check if the information is correct. If there are mistakes, contact the HR department or BCN Office. BCN advises the PhD students to fill in all the educational activities except for courses organized by BCN.

Agenda BCN Activities March 10-14, 2014 Brain Awareness week! March 12, 2014 BCN Publieksmiddag “Brein in Beweging” March 20 & 21, 2014 BCN Retreat: Changed dates March 27, 2014 BCN Investigators meeting June 18/19 & 24/25, 2014 BCN Statistics Course

Credits

Maximum1

Seminars/Journal clubs

0.1/seminar or JC

2 EC

Presenting data at international conferences (orally and poster)

0.5/conf 0.5/conf 0.5/prize

Workshops/Master classes /Summer school

Invited lecture outside institute Prize for best abstract/poster/presentation

6 EC

< 10,000 Euro

0.5 EC

10,000 <> 30,000 Euro

1 EC

> 30,000 Euro

2 EC

Supervised reviewing of manuscripts (2)

1 EC/2 ms

3 EC

Research stay abroad (minimum 2 weeks)

4 EC

Depending on time invested (28 hrs per EC)

4 EC

Is granted only in very special occasions. Prior to the visit to the Dutch lab, the supervisor and PhD student must - with arguments - appeal for granting with the PhD education committee of the Research institute.

Stay in Dutch lab

Other academic activities GSMS PhD council GSMS educational committee Research Institute’s PhD councils

1 EC/yr 1 EC/yr

6 EC

1 EC/conf

Depending on time invested and agreements within Research Institutes

Organisation of scientific meeting (symposium/ conference) Teaching/Student supervision Tutor/mentor

Please add: Are you on Facebook? Then expect an invitation to the new BCN Community Group in the near future!

Lecture

[email protected]

Depending on time and literature (28 hrs per EC)

Granted project proposal – 1st author:

Check the website for detailed information.

■■ BY DIANA KOOPMANS

remarks

Depending on time Medical Education Medical Sciences invested

Coach scientific master thesis Definitions: 1 Maximum EC for full time 4 years PhD students, 3 and 2 years students accordingly less 2 Teaching can be for medical as well as other students at university level

4 EC

According to Institute for Multiplier

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>>PROMOTIO NS The traumatized brain. Gray and white matter morphology in dissociative identity disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder P R O M O V E N D U S

S. Chalavi P R O E F S C H R I F T

The traumatized brain. Gray and white matter morphology in dissociative identity disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder

Trauma veroorzaakt dissociatieve identiteitsstoornis De hersenen van mensen met een dissocia tieve identiteitsstoornis (DIS, eerder: meer voudige persoonlijkheidsstoornis) of een posttraumatische stressstoornis zien er anders uit dan die van mensen zonder zo’n stoornis. De verhouding tussen grijze en witte stof is afwijkend in bepaalde gebieden, waaronder de hippocampus. Dat concludeert Sima Chalavi in haar promotieonderzoek.

P R O M O T O R E S

Prof.dr. A. Aleman Prof.dr. D.J. Veltman C O - P R O M O T O R

Dr. A.T.T.S. Reinders

Er bestaan twee visies op het ontstaan van DIS. Sommige wetenschappers stellen dat deze wordt veroorzaakt door een ernstig trauma in de jeugd, anderen menen dat patiënten – bewust

of onbewust – hun andere identiteitsstaat simuleren. Neurowetenschappelijk bewijs voor de eerste stelling was er niet. Chalavi vergeleek daarom met behulp van MRI-scans de verhouding tussen witte en grijze stof in de hersenen van mensen met DIS, met een posttraumatische stressstoornis en die van een gezonde controlegroep. Op basis van de scans concludeert Chalavi dat mensen met DIS of een posttraumatische stressstoornis een aantal afwijkingen vertonen in de grijze stof van de frontale, temporale en insulaire cortex en de hippocampus. Ook ontdekte ze dat een aantal belangrijke bundels van vezels, betrokken bij het reguleren van emoties, bij deze twee groepen een lagere witte stof integriteit laten zien, en dat de afwijkingen aan de hippocampus een correlatie vertonen met jeugdtrauma. Deze bevindingen ondersteunen de stelling dat DIS door een trauma veroorzaakt wordt. Sima Chalavi (Iran, 1981) studeerde Biomedical Engineering aan de Amir Kabir University of Technology, Teheran, Iran. Zij verrichtte haar promotieonderzoek bij de afdeling Neurowetenschappen van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen en het Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, Londen. Het onderzoek maakt deel uit van het onderzoeksproject ‘Neuroimaging Dissociative Identity Disorder’ en werd gefinancierd door ■■ PHOTO BY SANDER MARTENS

NWO en de International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD). Zij promoveerde op 28 oktober 2013.

The treatment of panic disorder. Psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, or the two combined? P R O M O V E N D U S

F.J. van Apeldoorn P R O E F S C H R I F T

The treatment of panic disorder. Psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, or the two combined? P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. J.A. den Boer C O - P R O M O T O R

Dr. W.J.P.J. van Hout Dr. P.P.A. Mersch De behandeling van paniekstoornis: Psychotherapie, Farmacotherapie of de combinatie van beide? Het doel van het onderzoek beschreven in dit proefschrift is een bijdrage leveren aan het optimaliseren van de behandeling van paniekstoornis met of zonder agorafobie.

Het ondergaan van een paniekaanval is een bijzonder nare ervaring. Plotseling, zonder duidelijke aanleiding, treedt er angst op waarna de angst snel oploopt en een piek bereikt. Lichamelijke sensaties die optreden zijn bijvoorbeeld hartkloppingen, trillen, duizeligheid, een versnelde ademhaling en

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>> CO N T I N UAT I O N P R O M O T I O N S

een druk op de borst. Tijdens een paniekaanval worden deze sensaties doorgaans als gevaarlijk geïnterpreteerd. Mensen kunnen bijvoorbeeld denken dat ze stikken, een hartaanval krijgen, flauwvallen, de controle verliezen of gek worden. Niet iedereen die wel eens een paniekaanval heeft ervaren, ontwikkelt een paniekstoornis. Mensen met een paniekstoornis zijn ook tussen aanvallen door bijna voortdurend bang voor volgende aanvallen of bezorgd over de gevolgen van aanvallen. Als er daarnaast sprake is van vermijding van situaties of plaatsen waar een volgende aanval zou kunnen optreden spreken we van agorafobie. Paniekstoornis kan dus zowel met als zonder agorafobie voorkomen. Paniekstoornis wordt behandeld met psychofarmaca of met psychotherapie en soms ook met beide. Als er gekozen wordt voor farmacotherapie is een behandeling met een SSRI eerste keus; een antidepressivum wat bij zowel depressie als angst wordt voorgeschreven (SSRI staat voor ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor’. In het Nederlands: ‘selectieve serotonine heropname remmer’). Wat psychotherapie betreft is cognitieve gedragstherapie (CGT) eerste keus. Franske van Apeldoorn (Groningen, 1973). Zij promoveerde op 4 november 2013.

Individual differences in working memory capacity: storage and strategy P R O M O V E N D U S

J.T. Mall P R O E F S C H R I F T

Individual differences in working memory capacity: storage and strategy P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. A. Johnson C O - P R O M O T O R

Dr. C.C. Morey Verschillen in geheugencapaciteit onderzocht Jonathan Mall onderzocht de verschillen in geheugencapaciteit van mensen. Sommige mensen hebben een groter werkgeheugen dan andere. Mall onderzocht of zij dan ook beter presteren onder verschillende omstandigheden.

Dat bleek niet per definitie zo te zijn. Het lijkt er op dat mensen een kleiner werkgeheugen met verschillende strategieën compenseren, bijvoorbeeld door zich beter te concentreren. Mensen met een groter werkgeheugen kunnen wel meer gericht hun langetermijngeheugen doorzoeken. Jonathan Mall (1983) deed zijn promotie onderzoek bij de afdeling Experimentele en Arbeidspsychologie van de RUG, onder zoekschool BCN. Het werd gefinancierd door NWO. Hij promoveerde op 7 november 2013. ■■ PHOTO BY BJÖRN KREFFT

The Groningen LCPUFA study. Associations between neonatal and early postnatal fatty acid status and developmental outcome at 9 years P R O M O V E N D U S

C. de Jong P R O E F S C H R I F T

The Groningen LCPUFA study. Associations between neonatal and early postnatal fatty acid status and developmental outcome at 9 years P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. M. Hadders-Algra Toevoeging vetzuren aan eerste flesvoeding niet per se goed voor gezondheid Of een kind zich in de schoolleeftijd goed ontwikkelt, hangt niet zozeer af van toegevoegde vetzuren aan flesvoeding gedurende de eerste twee maanden, maar van het dieet van de moeder voor en tijdens

de zwangerschap. Wanneer dit dieet rijk is aan het omega-3 vetzuur docosahexaeenzuur (DHA) laten kinderen op negenjarige leeftijd een betere motorische ontwikkeling zien. Dat concludeert Corina de Jong in haar promotieonderzoek. Zij bestudeerde het effect van twee groepen toegevoegde vetzuren (DHA en arachidonzuur, AA) in flesvoeding op de latere ontwikkeling van het kind. Wetenschappers veronderstellen dat de toevoeging van DHA en AA aan de eerste flesvoeding een positief effect heeft op de vroege ontwikkeling van het kind. De Jong

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onderzocht de effecten van de toegevoegde vetzuren op de ontwikkeling van negenjarigen. Ze keek daarvoor naar hun motorische, cognitieve en emotionele ontwikkeling, en naar lengte, gewicht, hoofdomtrek, bloeddruk en hartslag.

Core stability in soccer: it’s a matter of control! P R O M O V E N D U S

A.J. Borghuis P R O E F S C H R I F T

Core stability in soccer: it’s a matter of control! De promovenda concludeert dat de toevoeging van DHA en AA aan flesvoeding geen eenduidig voordeel oplevert voor de ontwikkeling. De vetzuren bleken alleen nuttig voor de kinderen van moeders die tijdens de zwangerschap rookten. Het nadeel dat kinderen ervaren door het roken van hun moeder tijdens de zwangerschap leek door het toevoegen van de vetzuren grotendeels gecompenseerd te worden. Belangrijker dan de toevoeging van DHA aan flesvoeding is volgens de promovenda de voeding van de moeder voor de geboorte van haar kind. Ze concludeert dat op basis van het DHA-niveau in de navelstreng. Het onderzoek bevestigt tot slot dat borstvoeding een klein positief effect laat zien op de ontwikkeling van de hersenen en het cardiovasculair systeem. Corina de Jong (Heerenveen, 1980) studeerde psychologie aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Zij verrichtte haar promotieonderzoek bij de afdeling Ontwikkelingsneurologie van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen. Het onderzoek werd gefinancierd door de EU. De Jong werkt als postdoc onderzoeker in het UMCG. Zij promoveerde op 13 november 2013. ■■ PHOTO BY GERDA DE VOOGD

P R O M O T O R E S

Prof.dr. K.A.P.M. Lemmink Prof.dr. C. Visscher C O - P R O M O T O R

Dr. A.L. Hof

Amateurvoetballers reageren sneller op verstoring van balans dan niet-sporters De rompspieren van amateurvoetballers reageren sneller op een plotselinge verstoring van de balans dan de rompspieren van niet-sporters. Met een specifiek trainingsprogramma is het bovendien mogelijk om de balanshandhaving en wendbaarheid van veelbelovende jonge voetballers te vergroten. Dat zijn twee van de conclusies van het promotieonderzoek van Jan Borghuis.

Het begrip core stability (rompstabiliteit) wordt volgens Borghuis vaak verschillend gebruikt en geïnterpreteerd. In het eerste deel van zijn proefschrift bracht hij daarom in kaart wat er onder core stability wordt verstaan en doet hij een voorstel voor een universeel bruikbare definitie. Vervolgens ontwikkelde hij een methode om rompstabiliteit te meten. Tijdens een zitbalanstest, die werd afgenomen terwijl de proefpersonen op een instabiele balansstoel zaten, werd de balans in meerdere richtingen verstoord om spierreactietijden en bewegingsdata te kunnen onderzoeken. De rompspieren van tien voetballers bleken sneller te reageren dan die van elf minder actieve, niet-voetballers. Op basis van de resultaten van deze en een volgende test ontwikkelde Borghuis een meetmethode waarmee het effect wordt gemeten van oefeningen op de vaardigheid om de romp te stabiliseren. Hij concludeert dat een speciaal trainingsprogramma positieve effecten laat zien, maar dat er geen significante verschillen aangetoond werden tussen de groep die het programma volgde en een controlegroep (samen negentig jeugdige profvoetballers). Verder onderzoek kan volgens hem bijdragen aan het ontwikkelen van effectieve trainingsprogramma’s voor betere prestaties en minder blessures. Jan Borghuis (Kampen, 1985) studeerde Bewegingswetenschappen aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Hij verrichtte zijn promotieonderzoek bij het Interfacultair Centrum voor Bewegingswetenschappen van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen. Het onderzoek werd gefinancierd

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als MD/PhD-traject van de Junior Scientific Masterclass (UMCG). Borghuis werkt als inspanningsfysioloog/fysiek trainer bij voetbalclub FC Twente. Hij promoveerde op 13 november 2013. ■■ PHOTO BY BERT OTTEN

Growth of preterm-born children P R O M O V E N D U S

I.F.A. Bocca-Tjeertes P R O E F S C H R I F T

Growth of preterm-born children P R O M O T O R E S

Prof.dr. A.F. Bos Prof.dr. S.A. Reijneveld C O - P R O M O T O R

Bocca-Tjeertes ontwikkelde, samen met haar collega’s en op basis van een omvangrijk gegevensbestand, groeidiagrammen voor mild en ernstig vroeggeboren kinderen. Haar conclusie: die groei verloopt echt anders dan die van op tijd geborenen. Weliswaar vindt er inhaalgroei plaats, maar die is beperkt tot het eerste jaar na de geboorte en kan de gevolgen van vroeggeboorte niet helemaal compenseren. Dat geldt voor te vroeg geboren kinderen met en zonder groeivertraging bij de geboorte. Wel zorgt groeivertraging bij de geboorte voor een twee keer hoger risico op een ontwikkelingsachterstand. Om de groei goed te monitoren, pleit Bocca-Tjeertes ervoor om aangepaste groeidiagrammen te gebruiken en om de groei steeds te verbinden met de individuele geboortegegevens.

Dr. A.F. de Winter Groei van vroeggeboren kinderen verloopt anders dan die van op tijd geborenen Kinderen die te vroeg geboren zijn (voor de 37ste zwangerschapsweek) groeien volgens een ander patroon dan kinderen die op tijd zijn geboren. Ze moeten daarom niet, zoals de Wereld Gezondheidsorganisatie WHO wil, beschouwd worden als op tijd geborenen. Dat concludeert Inger Bocca-Tjeertes in haar promotieonderzoek.

De vooruitzichten van kinderen die te vroeg of veel te vroeg (voor de 32 ste week) geboren worden, zijn door verbeterde neonatale zorg steeds beter. Hoewel vroeggeboortes steeds vaker voorkomen, zijn er weinig gegevens over de groei van premature baby´s beschikbaar.

Inger Bocca-Tjeertes (Hilversum, 1979) studeerde Geneeskunde aan de Universiteit Maastricht. Zij verrichtte haar promotieonderzoek bij de afdeling Neonatologie (Beatrix kinderziekenhuis) van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen. De studie maakt deel uit van een samenwerkingsverband tussen de UMCG-afdelingen Neonatologie en Sociale Geneeskunde. Het onderzoek werd gefinancierd door het Beatrix kinderziekenhuis, de afdeling Sociale Geneeskunde, Friso Kindervoeding b.v., Pfizer Europe b.v., FrieslandCampina, de Cornelia Stichting, de Nederlandse Hersenstichting en het A. Bulk JGZ-onderzoeksfonds. Bocca-Tjeertes is in opleiding tot kinderarts in het UMCG. Zij promoveerde op 20 november 2013.

Dawn, light at night and the clock. Impact on human alertness, performance and physiology P R O M O V E N D U S

M. van de Werken P R O E F S C H R I F T

Dawn, light at night and the clock. Impact on human alertness, performance and physiology P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. D.G.M. Beersma C O - P R O M O T O R

Dr. M.C.M. Gordijn Geel licht gezonder tijdens nachtdienst In onze huidige 24 uur maatschappij zijn er

steeds meer mensen wakker op tijdstippen waarop ons lichaam liever zou willen slapen. Werken tijdens de nacht, laat opblijven ’s nachts voor een feest, vroeg opstaan in de ochtend voor werk, of door tijdzones vliegen, is veelvoorkomend gedrag dat in conflict staat met onze lichamelijke voorkeur voor slaap/waak verdeling over de 24 uur. Onze biologische klok in de hersenen, op tijd gezet door lichtinformatie van met name de zon, regelt onze 24 uurs ritmiek in fysiologie en gedrag. Het kan dus zijn dat je lichaam gereed gemaakt wordt om te slapen, maar het midden op de dag is omdat je net van Amsterdam naar New York gevlogen bent. Individuele verschillen in afstemming en periode van de biologische klok zorgen er voor dat mensen verschillen in de tijd dat zij het liefst slapen of opstaan. Dit maakt bepaalde mensen minder of meer geschikt voor werk op bepaalde tijdstippen van de dag. Niet iedereen zal werken in nachtdienst of in de vroege ochtend kunnen verdragen. Hierdoor zullen veel mensen kiezen voor werk dat uitgevoerd wordt op tijdstippen die het beste passen bij hun voorkeur voor de tijdstippen waarop zij wakker willen zijn. Desalniettemin zijn er veel mensen die in nachtdiensten werken of doordeweeks vroeger op moeten staan dan zij zouden willen. Wakker zijn op momenten waarop men liever zou slapen kan gevolgen hebben voor de alertheid, iets wat de kans op fouten en op ongelukken verhoogt. Met behulp van licht kan de alertheid worden verhoogd. Met name blauw licht, licht met een korte golflengte, is effectief in het verhogen van een gevoel van activatie en het verminderen van slaperigheid. Vooral tijdens werken in de

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nacht kan licht een belangrijke rol spelen in het wakker en alert houden van mensen. Hierdoor kan de productiviteit hoger komen te liggen en vermindert de kans op ongelukken/fouten veroorzaakt door vermoeidheid. Maan van de Werken (1978) verrichte haar onderzoek bij de afdeling Chronobiologie. Zij promoveerde op 6 december 2013. ■■ PHOTO BY MIRRE SIMONS

Sexual coloration and aging P R O M O V E N D U S

M.J.P. Simons P R O E F S C H R I F T

Sexual coloration and aging P R O M O T O R E S

Prof.dr. S. Verhulst Prof.dr. A.G.G. Groothuis Te sexy rode snavel of buik versnelt veroudering Mirre Simons deed onderzoek naar de relatie tussen seksuele signalen, reproductieeigenschappen en verouderingssnelheid bij zebravinken en stekelbaarzen. De door carotenen rood gekleurde snavels van zebra vinken en buiken van stekelbaarsmannetjes hebben een seksuele aantrekkingskracht. Men kan het zien als ‘blosjes van gezondheid’, die goede vooruitzichten bieden op een succesvolle voortplanting (conceptie, nest- en broedzorg). Zebravinken met een minder rode snavel dan gemiddeld bleken inderdaad minder lang te leven dan die met een ‘normaal’ aantrekkelijk

uiterlijk. Overdrijving kan echter fataal zijn. Simons toont aan dat ook zebravinken met een rodere snavel dan gemiddeld eerder sterven. En een stekelbaarsmannetje dat voortdurend bezig moet met het repareren van zijn nest – dat steeds vernield wordt door de onderzoeker – spaart zijn krachten door zich minder druk te maken om zijn uiterlijk en de kleur van zijn buik te laten vervalen. De overlap in de hypotheses over de kosten van reproductie, seksuele signalen en de oorzaken van veroudering suggereert dat door het bestuderen van één van deze aspecten, vooruitgang geboekt kan worden in alle drie de onderzoeksvelden. Om dit te bereiken heeft Simons seksuele signalen bestudeerd en manipulaties van reproductieve kosten en carotenen uitgevoerd. De belangrijkste voorspelling van de disposable soma (wegwerp lichaam) theory, een evolutionair model van veroudering, is dat verhoogde investering in reproductie, veroudering versnelt. Bij stekelbaarsmannetjes vond Simons inderdaad dat testosteronverhoging en seksuele stimulatie, de veroudering versnelt. De reden dat deze effecten uitblijven tijdens een manipulatie van nestbouw, kan zijn dat dit investering van de stekelbaarsman in zijn seksuele signaal verminderde. Zulke plasticiteit in het herverdelen van kosten van reproductie kan een reden zijn waarom deze niet altijd gevonden worden. Door middel van dierexperimenteel onderzoek, comparatieve- en meta-analyse vond Simons tevens bewijs voor kosten van caroteenafhankelijke signalen, en voor

alternatieve fysiologische mechanismen die ‘eerlijkheid’ van deze signalen kunnen garanderen. Over de veroudering van de rode buik van de stekelbaars en snavelkleur van de zebravink heeft hij mogelijk een universele eigenschap van de demografie van veroudering blootgelegd: een stabiliserende selectie op de expressie van eigenschappen alvorens veroudering inzet. Terminale effecten in snavelkleur laten zien dat de snelheid waarmee veroudering verloopt ineens sterk kan versnellen: De snavel van een zebravink bleek pas één jaar voor zijn dood te verbleken. Deze en andere voorspellingen heeft Simons

getest door theoretische modellen van veroudering toe te passen op twee metaanalyses uit de literatuur. Zoals het onderzoek naar dieetrestrictie bij knaagdieren, die zorgt voor een langer leven vanwege een langzamer verouderingsproces. Mirre Simons (1985) studeerde behavioural and cognitive neurosciences aan de RUG, waar hij zijn promotieonderzoek uitvoerde bij de vakgroep Gedragsbiologie, van het Centre for Behaviour and Neurosciences. Het werd gefinancierd met een persoonlijke Toptalentbeurs van NWO. Inmiddels werkt hij als postdoc bij de University of Sheffield (UK), in de groep

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Fang Cui (Taiyuan, China, 1982) studeerde Computer Wetenschappen aan de Beijing Normal University. Zij voerde haar promotieonderzoek uit bij het Neuroimaging Center van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen (UMCG) en het Nederlands Instituut voor Neurowetenschappen van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (KNAW). Het promotieonderzoek werd gefinancierd door een VENI-beurs van de NWO, een Marie Curie Excellence beurs van de European Research Council en een beurs van de Chinese Council for State Scholarships. Na haar promotie gaat Cui als onderzoeker werken bij het Institute of Affective and Scoial Neuroscience aan de Shenzhen University in China. Zij promoveerde op 9 december 2013.

Molecular Ecology, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences. Hij promoveerde op 6 december 2013. ■■ PHOTO BY MIRRE SIMONS

Distinguishing and connecting self and others. A social neuroscience perspective P R O M O V E N D U S

F. Cui P R O E F S C H R I F T

Distinguishing and connecting self and others. A social neuroscience perspective P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. C.M. Keysers ■■ PHOTO BY XINYUAN CUI

C O - P R O M O T O R

Dr. V. Gazzola Hoe de hersenen ‘zelf’ en ‘ander’ onderscheiden Het zien van de film “I am legend” met Will Smith in de hoofdrol, laat toeschouwers mogelijk heftige gevoelens van wanhoop en eenzaamheid ervaren. De mens wordt geboren als een sociaal dier. Daarom is het om te overleven uiterst belangrijk om jezelf te kunnen onderscheiden van anderen, maar ook om jezelf met anderen te verbinden. “Hoe werkt het brein wanneer we sociale functies uitvoeren?” Deze vraag onderzoekt Fang Cui in haar proefschrift.

Cui gebruikte een combinatie van functionele magnetische resonantie imaging (fMRI) en elektro-encefalografie (EEG) technieken om te onderzoeken hoe de hersenen onderscheid

Challenging the stability of personality. Studies on developmental plasticity in rodents maken tussen zelf en de ander. Zij bestudeerde bijvoorbeeld hoe ons brein onderscheid maakt tussen actieve en passieve lichaamsbewegingen. Ook legt ze uit hoe ze fMRI en EEG gebruikte om uit te vinden hoe je de acties van anderen deelt, waarom je pijn van anderen sterker ervaart wanneer je volledig verantwoordelijk bent voor hun lijden, dan wanneer je daar niet of slechts deels verantwoordelijk voor bent, en waarom je je beter voelt als je weet dat de lijdende persoon een financiële compensatie heeft ontvangen voor het lijden. Het proefschrift van Cui ontrafelt een deel van het mysterie van onze sociale aard.

P R O M O V E N D U S

G. Gracceva P R O E F S C H R I F T

Challenging the stability of personality. Studies on developmental plasticity in rodents P R O M O T O R E S

Prof.dr. T.G.G. Groothuis Prof.dr. J.M. Koolhaas Stabiliteit persoonlijkheid en regulering stresshormoon Giulia Gracceva onderzocht bij knaagdieren hoe vroeg in het leven persoonlijkheid verschijnt en

in hoeverre deze kan veranderen, bijvoorbeeld als aanpassing aan omgevingscondities in het begin van het leven. De laatste decennia is duidelijk geworden dat ook dieren over persoonlijkheid beschikken. Deze consistente verschillen in gedrag tussen individuen gelijk in geslacht en soort trekt veel aandacht van gedragsecologen en evolutionair-biologen. Er wordt vaak verondersteld dat de persoonlijkheid relatief stabiel blijft tijdens het leven, maar in hoeverre persoonlijkheid tijdens de ontwikkeling kan veranderen is nog nauwelijks bestudeerd. Gracceva onderzocht bij wildtype ratten of voeding, lichaam en hormonale toestand van de moeder tijdens de zwangerschap alsmede het aantal broers ten opzichte van zusters, de persoonlijkheid van een jong beïnvloeden. Daarnaast bestudeerde zij bij de wilde veldmuis of deze in het vroege leven zijn persoonlijkheid aanpast aan de wisseling van de seizoenen. Tijden het voorjaar zijn er namelijk

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sterke verschillen in de sociale omgeving en voedselbeschikbaarheid voor een pasgeboren dier. Gracceva’s drie belangrijkste bevindingen zijn: 1) In de wildtype-rat zijn belangrijke gedragstrekken van persoonlijkheid – zoals de mate van agressie en angst – relatief ongevoelig voor de gemanipuleerde omgevingsaspecten. Echter, een belangrijk kenmerk van persoonlijkheid, de koppeling tussen verschillende gedragingen (bijvoorbeeld:

agressieve dieren reageren anders op nietsociale stressoren dan niet-aggressieve dieren), werd makkelijk verbroken door aspecifieke omgevingsfactoren zoals het regelmatig hanteren van de dieren. 2) In de veldmuis was dit andersom, (wel effect op de expressie van afzonderlijke gedragingen, maar niet op de koppeling tussen deze gedragingen), hetgeen het belang van vergelijkende studies onderstreept, 3) Variatie in persoonlijkheid is gerelateerd aan aan de regulering van het stresshormoon corticosteron.

Giulia Gracceva (1981) studeerde biologie in Rome, Italië en deed haar promotieonderzoek aan de RUG, bij de vakgroep Behavioural Physiology and Behavioural Biology van het Center for Behaviour and Neurosciences (BCN). Zij promoveerde op 13 december 2013.

The Bayley-III-NL special needs addition. A suitable developmental assessment instrument for young children with special needs P R O M O V E N D U S

L. Visser ■■ PHOTOS BY MAARTEN DE KOK

P R O E F S C H R I F T

The Bayley-III-NL special needs addition. A suitable developmental assessment instrument for young children with special needs P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. A.J.J.M. Ruijssenaars C O - P R O M O T O R E S

Dr. M.E. Timmerman Dr. S.A.J. Ruiter Veelgebruikt instrument voor ontwikkelingsdiagnostiek verbeterd De meeste kinderen ontwikkelen zich in de eerste jaren van hun leven volgens verwachting. Bij een klein aantal is echter iets aan de hand. In dat geval is het belangrijk dat goede ontwikkelingsdiagnostiek plaatsvindt, zodat de begeleiding van het kind kan aansluiten bij de sterke en minder sterke punten in de ontwikkeling.

Een veelgebruikt instrument voor ontwikkelingsdiagnostiek is de Bayley-III-NL. Deze blijkt echter niet voldoende geschikt voor veel kinderen met een verstandelijke en/ of lichamelijke beperking. Het testmateriaal is niet afgestemd op deze doelgroep en de testresultaten leveren te weinig informatie op als basis voor de begeleiding. Linda Visser deed onderzoek naar de Special

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Needs Addition (SNA) van de Bayley-III-NL. De SNA komt tegemoet aan de beperkingen van de Bayley-III-NL en bestaat uit de Low Motor/Vision versie voor kinderen met een motorische en/ of visuele beperking, de Low Verbal versie voor kinderen met een spraak-/taalbeperking en de dynamische versie voor het vergroten van de handelingsgerichtheid.

Images of healthy aging: functional brain networks and selective attention

interventies om ouderen langer aan het werk te houden en goed te laten functioneren in de dagelijkse omgeving.


Uit de resultaten blijkt dat de SNA-versie de geschiktheid van de Bayley-III-NL voor kinderen met specifieke beperkingen verbetert en het instrument meer handelingsgericht maakt. Op basis daarvan wordt de Bayley-III-NL-SNA medio 2014 uitgegeven. Het instrument kan dus daadwerkelijk in de praktijk gebruikt gaan worden om de ontwikkeling van kinderen met een verstandelijke en/of lichamelijke beperking op een meer valide manier te onderzoeken dan tot nu toe mogelijk was. Linda Visser (Woerden, 1985) studeerde Kinder- en Jeugdpsychologie aan de Universiteit Utrecht en verrichtte haar promotieonderzoek aan de RUG, onderzoeksschool BCN, onderzoeksinstituut Pedok, afdeling Orthopedagogiek. Het werd gefinancierd door ZonMw. Ze blijft als universitair docent werkzaam bij de afdeling Orthopedagogiek. Zij promoveerde op 9 januari 2014.

P R O M O T O R E S

Linda Geerligs (Sneek, 1986) deed de Research Master Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen en verrichtte haar promotieonderzoek bij de afdeling Experimentele Psychologie/Graduate School voor Behavioral and Cognitive Neurosciences. Dit onderzoek maakt deel uit van een bredere lijn van onderzoek van haar promotors prof. Monicque Lorist en prof. Natasha Maurits naar gezond ouder worden (Healthy Ageing). Geerligs is nu postdoc aan de Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit van de Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK. Zij promoveerde cum laude op 9 januari 2014.

■■ P H O TO BY M AT H I E U VA N D E WETERING

L. Geerligs P R O E F S C H R I F T

Images of healthy aging: functional brain networks and selective attention Prof.dr. M.M. Lorist Prof.dr. N.M. Maurits Ouderen compenseren achteruitgang hersenen De samenwerking tussen verschillende hersengebieden verandert als we ouder worden en dit be?nvloedt het cognitief functioneren. Linda Geerligs heeft deze veranderingen onderzocht waarbij ze zich vooral heeft gericht op de manier waarop we aandacht richten op informatie uit onze omgeving die voor ons belangrijk is, en onbelangrijke informatie negeren zodat we daar niet door afgeleid worden. De resultaten van dit onderzoek laten zien dat het voor ouderen lastig is om informatie te negeren die niet van belang is; hoe ouder we worden hoe sterker we afgeleid worden. Ouderen kunnen tot op zekere hoogte achteruitgang in cognitief functioneren voorkomen. Een goede voorbereiding op wat komen gaat, bijvoorbeeld, kan helpen om beter te presteren. Geerligs heeft gevonden dat ouderen die goed presteren dat doen door extra hersengebieden te activeren en communicatie tussen specifieke hersengebieden te versterken. Deze resultaten bieden nieuwe aanknopingspunten voor het ontwikkelen van

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Functional connectivity of the primary somatosensory cortex and its role during action observation

Valchev oppert dat wanneer we iemand zien handelen, we blijkbaar niet alleen de motoractiviteit simuleren, maar ook de sensaties die met die handeling gepaard gaan.


N. Valchev P R O E F S C H R I F T

Functional connectivity of the primary somatosensory cortex and its role during action observation P R O M O T O R

Prof.dr. N.M. Maurits Zien handelen activeert niet alleen motoractiviteit lichaam, maar ook bijpassende sensaties Onze hersenen ontvangen niet alleen informatie uit de wereld om ons heen, maar beïnvloeden ook hoe we die omgeving ervaren. Dat concludeert Nikola Valchev in zijn promotieonderzoek. Hij ging na welke rol de primaire sensibele cortex, een hersengebied dat belangrijk is voor het verwerken van gevoelsstimuli, speelt in de simulatie van handelingen van anderen. Valchev voerde verschillende gedrags experimenten uit om na te gaan hoe de primaire sensibele cortex (SI) communiceert met gebieden die betrokken zijn bij de mentale simulatie van handelingen van anderen. Zo liet hij proefpersonen het gewicht van een doos schatten, terwijl ze toekeken hoe deze in een filmpje door een hand werd opgetild. Na magnetische onderdrukking van de activiteit in SI waren deelnemers slechter in staat het gewicht van de doos correct in te schatten.

Aanvullend bewijs voor deze stelling vond de promovendus in een experiment waarin bleek dat incomplete handelingen ons motorsysteem direct beïnvloeden. Blijkbaar beïnvloeden verwachtingen wat we zien. Vervolgonderzoek kan volgens Valchev nieuw licht werpen op filosofische vragen rondom “vrije wil” en “onafhankelijke observatie”. Nikola S. Valchev (Bulgarije, 1980) studeerde Psychologie aan de universiteit van Lissabon (Portugal) en Neurowetenschappen aan de

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Hij verrichtte zijn promotieonderzoek bij het NeuroImaging Centre (NIC) van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen en het Centre for studies and research in Cognitive Neuroscience (University of Bologna, Cesena, Italië). Het onderzoek werd onder andere gefinancierd door de Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal), de Portugese Foundation for Science and Techology (FCT) en UMCG. Hij promoveerde op 20 januari 2014. ■■ PHOTO BY SANDER MARTENS ■ ■ E V E LY N K U I P E R - D R E N T H , O P B A S I S VAN PERSBERICHTEN VAN DE RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN

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>>CH E E K Y TH EO R E MS

“A strong relationship and an understanding and supportive partner are essential factors for professional success and personal happiness.” >> Sima Chalavi

“Science is not about searching for an answer but rather about searching for the right question.” >> Nikola Valchev

“The most valuable thing you can learn from your supervisor is not knowledge and techniques, but the attitudes towards science.” >> Fang Cui

“There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.” – Vladimir Nabokov >> Fang Cui

“Motherhood makes me realize that I am nothing more than a mammal and I do the job as rats and voles.” – after Bon Iver: “I am my mother’s only one, it’s enough”. >> Giulia Gracceva

“Wie niet sterk is, moet stabiel zijn!” >> Jan Borghuis

“Melatonine is geen “slaaphormoon” en het zou verboden moeten worden om melatonine als slaaphormoon aan te prijzen en te verkopen.” >> Maan van de Werken

“Fatsoen staat vooruitgang in de weg, ook in de wetenschap.” >> Mirre Simons

“Wees niet bevreesd langzaam vooruit te gaan, doch wel om stil te blijven staan.” – Confucius, tevens motto van Wushu-vereniging Bao Trieu Blijd. >> Corina de Jong

“Ook al is je to-do lijst oneindig, je leven is dat niet.” >> Linda Geerligs


> > C OL OP H O N This newsletter is published by the School for Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences Frequency

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Björn Krefft, Dave Langers, Kathrin Luckmann de Lopez,

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Sander Martens - http://www.sandermartens.com, Barbara Nordhjem,

Anouschka Ramsteijn, [email protected]

Bert Otten, Rick Schoffelen, Mirre Simons, Linda Visser,

Florian Sense, [email protected]

Gerda de Voogd - http://www.fotodevoogd.nl, Anita Wagner,

Frederieke Vlieg, [email protected]

Mathieu van de Wetering, Martijn Wieling, www.phdcomics.com,

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Grace Zhou

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Martijn Wieling

Frans Cornelissen, [email protected] Etienne Gaudrain, [email protected] Heleen Hoogeveen, [email protected] Deadline for the next edition: 18 April 2014

Newsletter 93. In the name of science

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