What role do parent-child interactions play in the development, maintenance and treatment of depression in young people?

Based on the results of a language-switching experiment, PhD candidate Fatemeh (Simeen) Tabassi Mofrad MA and Professor Niels Schiller have discovered that the traditional categorisation of brain areas is not sufficient. They published their research findings in the scientific journal NeuroImage.

The Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) is a network focusing on science valorisation and outreach, stimulating interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and expertise on topics related to brain and cognition.

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?

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

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

Promotores: R. Cramer, A.K. Lenstra, Co-Promotor: B.M.M. de Weger

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.

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.

This page is under construction.

This page is under construction.

Promotores: H.W. Lenstra, A. Lucchini

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…

PhD defence

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.

This thesis describes our search to identify and understand possible regulatory mechanisms of integrin α6β4 in cell-matrix adhesion and intracelular signaling.

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…

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.

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…

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether the lipid/protein ratio and the total dry SC mass per surface area are related with the skin barrier function of controls and AE patients.

The barrier function of the skin is primarily provided by the stratum corneum (SC), the outermost layer of the skin. Skin barrier impairment is thought to be a primary factor in the pathogenesis of atopic eczema (AE).

Promotor: Prof.dr. P. Stevenhagen, Co-Promotor: Dr. J.H. Evertse

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

How are links between macro-invertebrate diversity and ecosystem functioning influenced by anthropogenic pressures?

Integrins play an essential role in multicellular life by connecting cells to the extracellular matrix.

PhD defence

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…

Quantifying physical activity (using accelerometers) and combining the frequency and intensity of activities with health data (brain MRI, traditional clinical parameters and metabolomics) is of utmost importance to monitor mobility and health among older individuals and study health promotion during…

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.

If X is a locally compact Hausdorff space, then a representation of the complex C* algebra C_0(X) on a Hilbert space $H$ is given by a spectral measure that takes its values in the orthogonal projections on $H$.

Acidobacteria is a widely distributed phylum but their functional roles in ecosystem processes are still largely elusive.

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