A neurobiological perspective on individual differences in social competence

Can playing certain games decrease cognitive decline or even enhance cognitive performance in the aging population?

Source: International Journal of Cosmetic Science, Volume 37, Number 1, pp. 148-148 (2015) ISBN: 0142-5463

Barrier function is the natural role of the skin. The lipid matrix present in the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum is important for this function.

Psychologist Bernadet Klaassens initiated a large fMRI study on the effect of drugs on brain networks in aging and Alzheimer's disease. It generated a unique data set and insight into a new method to develop drugs for patients with Alzheimer's.

A novel mathematical model describes spatial-temporal drug distribution within one or more brain units, which are cubic representations of a piece of brain tissue with brain capillaries at the edges.

Using brain imaging to discover the area in the brain that recognizes emotion.

An international partnership of brain researchers from 35 research centres - from the US to China - including the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), has collected resting-state functional MRI data from more than 1400 healthy volunteers and put the information online so that it is available…

Fatemeh (Simin) Tabassi Mofrad has recently received a project grant (€ 25,000) from LUF/Gratama Foundation for her ideas in investigating sex-by-genotype interactions in brain functions. She has a multidisciplinary research perspective which enables her to look at research issues from different angles.…

This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages from the perspective of how quantity is represented in the human brain.

Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death worldwide, and better models are urgently needed for disease progression studies and drug development.

Artin L-functions associated to continuous representations of the absolute Galois group G_K of a global field K capture a lot of information about G_K as well as arithmetic properties of K.

A P300-based Brain Computer Interface character speller, also known as P300 speller, has been an important communication pathway, under extensive research, for people who lose motor ability, such as patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or spinal-cord injury because a P300 speller allows human-beings…

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

Neurologist Professor Michel Ferrari has been awarded the Spinoza prize. 'In biomedical research you can only make breakthroughs at the borders between sciences,' according to Spinoza, doctor and scientist. 'This prize is proof that co-operation works.' Together with clinical and fundamental researchers…

Advanced UHF MRI techniques provide powerful tools for studying the zebrafish brain, an emerging model in neurological research. In this work, various MRI and localized MRS methods are optimized and employed for UHF strength for studying the zebrafish brain.

Promotores: H.W. Lenstra, A. Lucchini

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.

Clinical psychologist Bernet Elzinga has been appointed as Professor of a personal chair at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. This professorship will contribute both nationally and internationally to the broader promotion of Leiden University in the field of stress and psychopathology.

Adolescents who were more popular among their classmates in junior school are often the ones who are more inclined to share things fairly with others. During this sharing process, 'social' areas of the brain are more strongly activated than in adolescents who are less popular. This is the finding of…

A key challenge in neuroscience is understanding how neurons in hundreds of interconnected brain regions integrate sensory inputs with previous expectations to initiate movements and make decisions.

Serge Rombouts is a physicist whose PhD thesis was about functional MRI (fMRI). This visualises activity in regions of the brain. The appealing images of glowing brain regions that emerge from the computer are the result of calculations. According to Rombouts, this isn’t proper artificial intelligence.…

At science festival 'Over de kop', surprising brain facts alternate with confronting stories from the operating room. Researchers explain why our brains love beans and why you should never ride a racing bike without a helmet.

Which brain cell does what, when Parkinson's disease arises? It won't be long before this jigsaw is solved piece by piece. Ahmed Mahfouz, computational biologist, combines bio-knowledge from Leiden with algorithms from Delft and is getting closer to finding the key.

Metal-containing molecules combine geometrical features and a reactivity that are inherently different from that of organic molecules. My research focuses on light-activatable metal-based anticancer drugs and metal-functionalized liposomes. Light is a very selective way to activate photosensitive drugs…

Brain activity changes as people age, which can lead to cognitive decline. By measuring and comparing brain data from mice and humans, the researcher will investigate how the brain’s noise levels change with age and affect choice behavior.

When a physical system possesses symmetries, these are often accompanied by a representation of the symmetry group on a Hilbert space. Group representations on Hilbert spaces have been extensively studied.

Promotores: J.A.van Veen, P.L.G.Klinkhamer. Co-promotor: E.E.Kuramae

Promotores: Prof.dr. H. van Veen & Prof.dr. W. de Boer (Wageningen University)

Diacylglycerol lipases (DAGLα and DAGLβ) convert diacylglycerol to the endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoylglycerol. Our understanding of DAGL function has been hindered by a lack of chemical probes that can perturb these enzymes in vivo.

Children and adolescents really do use their ‘smart’ brain areas. This has been confirmed by an extensive and long-running study of the brain carried out by developmental psychologist Sabine Peters . Her findings can have important consequences for education. PhD defence 27 January.

Promotor: S.J. Edixhoven, Co-promotor: K.J. Batenburg

Erection problems can have a huge impact on quality of life and health, but current diagnostic methods are painful, uncomfortable and technologically outdated. PhD candidate Evelien Trip has developed a new device that can measure erections more comfortably and painlessly.

Shape and biological function are tightly connected. Physical descriptions are used to connect the shape of a biological system with its function.

Promoter: J.G.E.M.Fraaije, Co-promotor: A. Kros

During adolescence, mood disorder onset peaks. Mood variability is associated with negative mental health outcomes, so understanding biological factors that might be associated with mood variability, such as sleep and structural brain development, could elucidate the mechanisms underlying mood and anxiety…

What effect did the lockdown have on young people? Leiden researchers started a study of this in the first year of the covid pandemic. They discovered an impact on the development of the brain areas involved in social behaviour. The researchers published their discovery in Scientific Reports at Nat…

Novel language learning activates different neural processes than was previously thought. A Leiden research team has discovered parallel but separate contributions from the hippocampus and Broca's area, the learning centre in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere of the brain also seems to play…

On 12 April 2022 Alok Oak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Globally and regionally, biodiversity is declining and there are shifts in species’ occurrences and functional traits.

Brain development in children with an extra X chromosome as compared to children with autism: evidence from MRI

Wetland plants are distinguished from plants of other terrestrial ecosystems by their adaptations to specific habitat stresses, including waterlogged and flooding and the subsequent abundance of phytotoxic compounds.

In this thesis, time-lapse fluorescent microscopy plays a pivotal role in investigating functional materials within living cells as well as the migratory behaviour of neural progenitor cells.

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Due to their central physiological roles in living organisms, retaining beta-glycosidases have been the subject of tremendous research efforts to examine their structure/function relation using numerous biophysical and biochemical approaches.

Single-layer graphene (SLG) has attracted considerable interest as a proton exchange membrane for direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), owing to its atomic thickness, mechanical robustness, and unique proton permeability.

PhD defence

Metals surfaces form a group of effective catalysts for the reaction of small molecules such as hydrogen (H2).