Lab News
New paper by Annelies van Nuland in Brain
Our study entitled “Effects of dopamine on reinforcement learning in Parkinson’s disease depend on motor phenotype” is now published in the Brain journal. In this study, we investigated whether interindividual heterogeneity in tremor symptoms could account for the puzzlingly large variability in the effects of dopaminergic medication on reinforcement learning. We found that in non-tremor patients, dopaminergic medication improved reward-based choice, replicating previous studies, whereas dopaminergic medication improved learning from punishment in tremor-dominant patients. The paper can be downloaded here.
Vanessa heading to greener pastures
Vanessa’s time in our lab has come to an end. She will continue her research as a postdoc now working with Prof. Lorenz Deserno at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany. Besides her postdoc, Vanessa has also decided to pursue a medical degree.
We wish her all the best for the future!
New paper in PLOS Biology
Our study titled “Modeling flexible behavior in childhood to adulthood shows age-dependent learning mechanisms and less optimal learning in autism in each age group” is now published online in the PLOS Biology journal. In this study, we investigated how flexible behavior changes developmentally in ASD. The results show that autistic individuals showed on average more perseveration and less feedback sensitivity than TD individuals, and that older age groups showed more feedback sensitivity than younger age groups. Furthermore, dominant learning mechanisms underpinning flexible behavior where found to differ across developmental stages and reduced flexible behavior in ASD was driven by less optimal learning on average within each age group. In autistic children, perseverative errors were positively related to anxiety symptoms, and in autistic adults, perseveration (indexed by both task errors and model parameter estimates) was positively related to restricted, repetitive behaviors. The paper can be found here.
Ben joins the lab!
We are welcoming Benjamin Kop as a new PhD student to the lab! Ben will be jointly supervised by Hanneke and Lennart Verhagen. He will use Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation (TUS) to stimulate the basal ganglia and investigate its effects on behavior. For more information, check out his personal page!
Jesse joins the lab!
We are happy to welcome a new member to our lab! Jesse (23) is a student at the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Master at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Under the daily supervision of Johannes, he will be working on his Master’s thesis research project where he will look at the neural underpinnings of motivational biases during learning and decision-making processes. For more information, check out his personal page.
Congrats to Dr. Annelies van Nuland!
Annelies van Nuland defended her doctoral thesis on "Molecular, structural, and behavioral differences between tremor dominant and non-tremor Parkinson’s disease". Congrats Annelies!
Floortje joins the lab!
We are welcoming another new member to the lab! After doing a bachelor in Health and Life Sciences and a masters in Cognitive Neuroscience, Floortje is now joining the lab for her PhD, supervised by Hanneke. She will be working on Hanneke’s VIDI project: “Getting things done: Unravelling the neurocognitive mechanisms of adaptive decision-making”, using behavioural paradigms, psychopharmacology and potentially fMRI. Check out her personal page for more information!
Hanneke’s research at Radboud Winter School
Hanneke’s research has been turned into a set of teaching materials for primary school students. These materials have now been released at the Radboud Winter school.
Elena joins the lab!
Congratulations to Elena for joining the lab! Elena (28) is a new PhD student, working in both Hanneke den Ouden’s lab and Roshan Cools’ lab. She is part of the Language in Interaction consortium, where she investigates the role of cognitive maps and dopamine in linguistic inference, using a combination of functional MRI and psychopharmacology in healthy human volunteers. For more information, check out her personal page!
New paper in eLife
The study “Catecholaminergic modulation of meta-learning” is now published online in eLife. In this study, we examined how the enhancement of catecholamine function modulates the ability to optimise the learning rate as a function of environmental volatility. The results indicate that blocking the catecholamine transporter with methylphenidate enhanced the ability to adapt the learning rate. Specifically, participants showed higher learning rates in volatile relative to stable phases. The paper can be found here.
New paper by Annelies van Nuland in Human Brain Mapping
Our study “GABAergic changes in the thalamocortical circuit in Parkinson's disease” is now published online in Human Brain Mapping. In this study, we investigated the role of changes in GABA levels in the thalamocortical motor circuit in different clinical phenotypes of Parkinson’s disease. We found that motor cortex GABA levels were negatively correlated with severity of symptoms, both on and off medication. This leads to the conclusion that GABA plays a beneficial role in Parkinson’s disease. The paper is open access and can be downloaded here.
Congrats to Dr. Jennifer Swart!
Jennifer Swart elegantly defended her thesis "To go or not to go" and received her doctoral degree cum laude. Congrats Jennifer!
New paper by Jennifer Swart in PLOS Biology
Our study titled “Frontal network dynamics reflect neurocomputational mechanisms for reducing maladaptive biases in motivated action” is now published online in the PLOS Biology journal. In this study, we investigated the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying overcoming maladaptive motivational influences through frontal cognitive control. We found that midfrontal theta-band activity covaried with the level of Pavlovian conflict and was associated with reduced Pavlovian biases rather than reduced instrumental learning biases. Motor and lateral prefrontal regions synchronized to the midfrontal cortex, and these network dynamics predicted the reduction of Pavlovian biases over and above local, midfrontal theta activity. The paper is open access and can be downloaded here.
New paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Our study titled “Pavlovian Control of Escape and Avoidance ” is now published online in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. In this study, we aimed at establishing a behavioral and computational framework to examine aversive Pavlovian responses (activation vs. inhibition) depending on the proximity of an aversive state (escape vs. avoidance). The results for choice and reaction times suggest that escape is associated with a bias for vigorous action, whereas avoidance is associated with behavioral inhibition. The paper can be found here.
Hanneke awarded Radboud Science Award
Hanneke has been awarded one of the three Radboud Science Awards for the year 2018. Congrats Hanneke!
Mojtaba joins the lab!
Mojtaba Rostami Kandroodi has joined the lab as a visiting PhD student! He will work with Hanneke on modelling individual differences in reversal learning. For more information, check out his personal page.
![Donders Wonders: Een wetenschapper voor de klas [NL]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6016b7574179414b86526a5c/1637494906461-NF4ZQT959MUNLFLPWORF/Screen+Shot+2021-11-21+at+12.38.07.png)
Donders Wonders: Een wetenschapper voor de klas [NL]
In this blogpost [NL], Annelies van Nuland writes about the Brain Awareness week in which neuroscientists from the Donders Institute visit middle schools all across the Netherlands.
Vanessa joins the lab!
Vanessa Scholz has joined the lab as a postdoctoral guest researcher! She will carrying out a large online study on motivational biases and how they relate to distinct transdiagnostic psychiatric symptom dimensions.
Donders Wonders: Could coffee harm or help you?
Annelies van Nuland has previously written a blogpost about how your morning coffee helps to wake you up, but how much coffee is too much?