February 2023
Myrthe's paper on on the effects of L-DOPA and oxytocin on the neurocomputational mechanisms of self-benefitting and prosocial reinforcement learning has been accepted for publication in Neuroimage.

Excited to announce that Ellen was awarded a Vici Grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for female lifespan research! @NWONieuws @NWOFunding NWO (Dutch Research Council)

Ellen's lecture on 'Alarm signals in our brain' as part of the interdisciplinary lecture series on 'Dealing with uncertainty' (Onvoorst/pelbaar) is online (in Dutch). You can watch it here. 

January 2023
Very happy to announce that Ellen was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to examine the effects of hormonal fluctuations on neurocognitive functioning across the female lifespan! Looking forward to setting up and carrying out this exciting research with our team and amazing collaborators for the next five years. #EUFunded #ERCCog @FLIRT

January 2023
Excited to announce that the program for the interdisciplinary public lecture series on 'Dealing with uncertainty' is now online. We organise this lecture series (in Dutch) in the context of the interdisciplinary research program Social Resilience and Security and in collaboration with Studium Generale. 

The aim of this lecture series  is to connect disciplines in an accessible way around the theme of uncertainty, creating unexpected, but above all interesting and new combinations of perspectives. In four duo lectures, scientists from the faculties of social sciences, mathematics and natural sciences, law, archaeology, humanities and governance and global affairs will give their interdisciplinary perspective on the topics of risk taking, conspiracy thinking, uncertainty in the brain, the role of emotions in decision-making, and the positive effects of uncertainty in our distant past and near future.

Dates: 6, 13, 20 and 27 February, 19.30-21.30 hrs, Lipsius Building, Leiden University.

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December 2022
Myrthe's paper on the effects of hormonal status on performance monitoring has been accepted for publication in Psychoneuroendocrinology. ​For a link, see Publications. 

November 2022
Ellen gave a presentation on the relevance of the social context on mistakes at the KNAW Young Academy interscience event "Mistakes" . You can watch the lecture (in Dutch) here.

Myrthe posted a preprint of her paper on the effects of L-DOPA and oxytocin on the neurocomputational mechanisms of self-benefitting and prosocial reinforcement learning on Psyarxiv.

October 2022
A warm welcome to Serafino Mansueto, who joined our lab as a postgraduate research internship trainee. see Projects & People section for more info.

September 2022
Getting ready for the yearly Society of Psychophysiological Research (SPR) meeting in Vancouver, Canada, where Myrthe will present her latest work from her PhD project.

August 2022
We have launched the Female Lifespan Research Initiative (FLIRT) to advance our understanding of how natural hormonal changes affect  (neuro)cognitive, affective, and social functioning in females of all ages. Check out the announcement page, where you can also subscribe to future communications and updates. 

July 2022
Check out an interesting seed grant opportunity for early career researchers who would like to set up an interdisciplinary collaboration within one of themes of the interdisciplinary research program Social Resilience and Security. 

June 2022
Ellen presented the (preliminary) results of Selin's first experimental work during the Dutch Neuroscience Meeting.

October 2021
Make sure to check out our pre-registration of the first (exciting!) study of Selin's PhD project.

June 2021
Ellen presented our work on social performance monitoring in obsessive compulsive symptomatology at the (virtual) Psychology and the Brain conference in Tübingen.

February 2021
A warm welcome to Selin Topel, who has joined our lab as a PhD candidate on a project that is a unique collaboration between three departments (Clinical, Developmental, and Cognitive Psychology). See Projects & People for more information.

May 2020
Congratulations to Sandy! She received a grant from the LUF (Leiden University Fund) to investigate how cognitive flexibility moderates the relationship between empathy and traumatic symptoms in immigrant Syrian children. These children have fled their country over the course of the Syrian Civil War and have applied for asylum in the Netherlands. In this project, Sandy will also employ a clinical perspective that will advance our understanding of the development of PTSD in populations at risk. 

April 2020
Myrthe's paper on a study in which we used our newly developed error-responsibility paradigm in healthy volunteers scoring high on obsessive-compulsive symptoms has been accepted for publication in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.

Ellen was interviewed about the effects of the current social distancing measures on mental health and hormones for a national newspaper (Algemeen Dagblad; click here for article in Dutch), for Radio (Radio2; click here), Elsevier Weekblad (click here), and for TV (RTL4 Editie NL; click here).

February 2020
Congratulations to Myrthe, as her 1st first-author paper of her PhD project has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Psychiatry! It's an impressive review on all studies conducted so far on social cognition alterations in patients with obsesssive-compulsive disorder. Francesca's help with checking the extensive tables is definitely also worth mentioning! See Publications for link to open access full text.

January 2020
Christian Tudorache from the Biology department was awarded a grant from the KNAW Dobberke Foundation to enable collaboration between his department and Clinical Psychology. In this project, social behavior as part of coping styles in zebra fish will be investigated. Congratulations to Christian!

December 2019
Sandy's paper on the neural correlates of social performance monitoring in individuals scoring high on psychopathic traits has been accepted for publication in Cortex.

November 2019
Ellen was invited to give a presentation at the annual Dutch meeting for Neuropsychology in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. See the meeting's website for more information.

May 2019
Ellen was invited to present the lab's past and present research at the Institute of Psychology of the Deutsche Sporthochschule in Cologne, Germany. It was an inspiring visit and very good to meet up with former colleagues!

August 2018
Sandy wrote a blog about our recent paper published in Scientific Reports. The paper addresses how being right can activate reward-related brain areas, even if it means losing money. You can find the blog here, and the paper here.

January 2018
Congratulations to Sandy, as she received a KNAW Sara van Dam research grant! Together with Dr. Einat Levi-Gigi (Bar-Ilan university in Israel) she will investigate the development of social performance monitoring processes in adolescents and the impact of growing up in a stressful environment.

November 2017
Ellen was invited to present our research on social performance monitoring at Todd Handy's Attentional Neuroscience Lab at the University of Britisch Columbia in Vancouver Canada.

October 2016
Sina received the prestigious 'Heinz-Heckhausen' young investigator award from the German Society for Psychology for her outstanding work in her dissertation. Congratulations Sina, well deserved indeed!

September 2016
Myrthe and Naomi, second year research master students of the research master in Clinical and Health psychology at Leiden University, joined our lab on the project on trustworthiness and social conformity in individuals scoring low and high on psychopathic traits. Welcome Myrthe and Naomi!

July 2016
Desiree's paper on the influence of genetic variations on the acute effects of cocaine and cannabis on reversal learning was accepted for publication in Psychopharmacology.

March 2016
Desiree successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled 'Individual differences in the acute effects of cannabis and cocaine on cognitive control' AND her paper on performance monitoring after administration of these drugs was accepted for publication in European Neuropsychopharmacology. Congratulations Dr. Spronk!

February 2016
Margit's paper on the effects of cooperative and competitive game play (Tetris!) on self-other integration was accepted for publication in Frontiers in Psychology.

January 2016
Javier successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled 'Every cloud has a silver lining: social cognitive skills and deficits in schizophrenia'. Congratulations Dr. de la Asuncion!

June 2015
Sandy joined the VIDI project as a postdoc, see Projects & People section for more info. Welcome Sandy!

May 2015
Desiree's paper on the acute effects of cannabis and cocaine on response inhibition has been accepted for publication in Addiction Biology.

April 2015
Margit's paper on behavioral and ERP effects of oxytocin administration on self-other integration has been accepted for publication in Cortex.

March 2015
Javier's paper on ERP correlates of self-other integration in schizophrenia patients has been accepted for publication in Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience.

August 2014
Sina's paper on social approach-avoidance tendencies in patients with major depression has been accepted for publication in Psychiatry Research.

July 2014
Anne's paper on reduced performance monitoring in patients with bipolar disorders has been accepted for publication in Bipolar Disorders.

April 2014
Desiree's paper on the (combined) effects of MDMA and alcohol administration on performance monitoring has been accepted for publication in Psychopharmacology.

April 2014
New (weebly) website!