TEAM MEMBERS
Principal investigator
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Barbara Braams, PhD
CV Barbara received her PhD from Leiden University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, before assuming her current position as an associate professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research, which focuses on adolescent neurocognitive development and decision making, has been published in top peer-reviewed journals in the field including the Journal of Neuroscience, Child Development and Developmental Science. She is a recipient of a NWO Rubicon and a NWO Veni grant. Her current work is supported by the AMMODO Science Award and a she is a core team member of the GUTS consortium. Her contributions to the field were acknowledged with several prizes including the Dutch Neuroscience Meeting Young Talent Prize. |
Postdocs
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Hester Sijtsma, PhD
Hester completed the bachelor’s program clinical neuropsychology (2014) and the research master program clinical neuropsychology (2016) at the University of Amsterdam. She then started her PhD research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under supervision of Prof. Dr. Lydia Krabbendam, Dr. Barbara Braams and Dr. Nikki Lee. Her research focuses on the development of trust, the neural mechanisms of trust and how friendship influences this behavior and these processes. Furthermore, she is interested in how social cognition and friendships relate to subclinical symptoms of depression, autism and psychosis. |
PhD students
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Tatvan Todor
Tatvan completed a double degree Master's in Biomedical Sciences with a specialization in Neuromodulation, part of which was spent at Tohoku University in Japan, where Tatvan conducted research on the gut-brain axis. She graduated in 2023 and began a PhD in Developmental Psychology within the ‘Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS)’ project at the Vrije University Amsterdam. This project, supervised by Barbara Braams and Lydia Krabbendam, investigates how the relationship between risk-taking behavior, stress, and socio-economic status is influenced by the development of gray matter structures in adolescents, using MRI techniques. Additionally, Tatvan’s role involves a focus on recruitment of participants within the project. Outside of work, she enjoys being creatively engaged through digital drawing or painting, attending music festivals here and there, and staying active by going to the gym. |
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Sibel Altikulaç
Sibel graduated from Leiden University in 2015 with a Master in Applied Neuroscience in Education and Child Studies. She then worked as a Research Assistant in the Brain & Development Lab (Leiden). In 2017 she started as a PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, supervised by Prof. Dr. Nienke van Atteveldt, Prof. Dr. Lydia Krabbendam and Dr. Barbara Braams. As part of the Lab of Learning, her research focuses on the development of secondary school students’ mindset, their academic achievement, and academic well-being. She is also using neuroimaging techniques to investigate the neural development. Outside of the lab, Sibel loves yoga, reading, and nature walks with friends and family. |
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Rebecca van Rijn
Rebecca graduated from both the Medical Biology Neuroscience and Cognitive Neuroscience research master at Radboud University Nijmegen in 2019. She first started working at the Vrije Universiteit as a research assistant for the ERC project SoConnect of Prof. Dr. Lydia Krabbendam. In 2021 Rebecca started her PhD focusing on prosocial (risk-taking) behaviour in adolescents, using fMRI, behavioural and EMA data collection. Her project is jointly supervised by Dr. Barbara Braams, Prof. Dr. Lydia Krabbendam and Prof. Dr. Paul van Lange. Rebecca is especially interested in adolescent development, (social) peer influences and practicing interdisciplinary research. When not at work, Rebecca enjoys running, going to music festivals and crafts. |
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Ana da Silva Pinho
PhD student - University of Amsterdam Ana’s background is in education, human development and psychopathology (University of Porto and Amsterdam). She worked on different developmental projects, such as emotion processing in infancy and intergenerational transmission of antisocial and criminal behaviour. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in the Connected Minds Lab and University of Amsterdam. Her project is jointly supervised by Dr. Wouter van den Bos, Dr. Lucas Molleman and Dr. Barbara Braams. Her PhD research broadly focusses on social learning and decision-making in adolescence. She will investigate how adolescents learn from each other, how this is shaped by social norms and how this affects their risk-taking and prosocial behaviour. To address these questions, she will use a wide range of methods: surveys, experimental tasks, computational modeling and neural measures. |
Alumni
Jill Blok
Research assistant (2019)
Research Master student - Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Amsterdam (2019)
Evelien van Beugen
Research Master student - Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Amsterdam (2019)
Anass Ben Mohammed
Master student - Clinical Neuropsychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2019-2020)
Kristie van Bergen
Master student - Clinical Neuropsychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2019-2020)
Alida Graat
Research Master student - Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Amsterdam (2019)
Desiree Hoogenboom
Master student - Clinical Neuropsychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2019-2020)
Sara Kapika
Research assistant (2019)
Nicky Lute
Research assistant (2019-2020)
Simon Poortman
Research assistant (2020)
Maaike van der Rhee
Research Master student - Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Amsterdam (2019-2020)
Luna Wattel
Research Master student - Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Amsterdam (2019-2020)
