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interview for Belgian Radio 1 “Nieuwe Feiten”

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I was interviewed by the Belgian Radio 1 for their popular science show “Nieuwe Feiten“. If you understand Dutch, you can listen to the podcast of 26 Feb 2019. I just discovered I feature in the same program together with Goedele Liekens! I’m so proud. As a brilliant sexologist who doesn’t shy the media she […]

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oops, I’ve let my website be hacked

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My website has been hacked and defaced. Argh! Three weeks ago a severe vulnerability in a popular WordPress plugin was found, but I wasn’t aware and lazily failed to install the patches. And with me 1.5 other million WordPress websites. Ouch! It has taken me a while to restore the affected pages from my daily […]

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juggle with human brains, goggle at macaque slices

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The neuroanatomy course for Psychology students has started again. Where does LIP project to, that isn’t reached by 7B? Where is the middle temporal sulcus in the macaque brain? If this is the medulla, where is the myelincephalon? So many questions, and only four practicals to answer them all. For grad students and postdocs that […]

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meet our new chimps

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We’ve received a new batch of ape brains: three chimps and one gorilla. After a happy life in the zoo we can give their brains a second life in science. We’ll use structural MRI techniques to map the architecture and wiring of the chimp brain, learning more about our closest relatives, and by proxy about ourselves. Thanks […]

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the world upside down: the ventral stream leads dorsal processing

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Our brains plan our actions using a dedicated dorsal parieto-frontal circuit. This circuit is thought to be fast, nearly automatic, and independent from perceptual processing in a ventral visual stream. Yet in a new paper in eNeuro Marius Zimmermann shows how representations in the ventral stream can lead the way in action planning. This is […]

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Why my phone doesn’t understand me, yet…

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Successful communication is conventionally viewed as a problem of signal-transmission. In fact, all major tech companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc) bet heavily on this notion, investing billions. Together with Arjen Stolk and Ivan Toni we wrote a review paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences setting out why this view is flawed. We discuss theoretical […]

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differences between techniques or species?

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The holy grail of comparative neuroanatomy is to show how humans are unique. Yet most recent evidence seems to suggest a remarkable degree of similarity. One well known claim for a uniquely human anatomical structure concerned the extreme capsule fibre complex (ECFC), a prominent white bundle connecting brain regions involved in language and social cognition. […]

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Vanessa Johnen on TMS and connectivity in eLife

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Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a tool to stimulate, modulate, and interrupt brain activity. It is often seen (and used) as a crude, non-specific, tool. But it doesn’t have to be, shows Vanessa Johnen in a new paper in eLife. By stimulating two regions in a pair-wise fashion, exactly how they also interact naturally, you […]

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Arjen Stolk on sharing concepts in PNAS

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Human communication is more powerful and more flexible than any communication system we know. Yet intuitively we often compare our communicative abilities to the coding-decoding scheme of a computer, where all information is captured in the transmitted signal. Is this right, wonders Arjen Stolk in a new paper in PNAS. Other theories point out that one […]

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Dr. Moniek Munneke!

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Moniek Munneke successfully defend her thesis “Measuring and modulating the brain with non-invasive stimulation” on the 3rd of October 2014 in Nijmegen, the Netherland. I’m honoured to have been a member of the manuscript committee and defence opposition.

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Dr. Arjen Stolk, cum laude

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Arjen Stolk successfully defended his thesis titled “On the generation of shared symbols” on the 2nd of September 2014 in Nijmegen. Not just successfully, his title was awarded “cum laude“, the highest Dutch distinction for a PhD! As a friend and co-promotor I couldn’t be more proud of this great achievement. All hail to the […]

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starting as a Marie Curie research fellow at the University of Oxford

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From the 1st of August 2014 I will start a new job at the University of Oxford. I will be working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Decision and Action Laboratory under the joint supervision of Matthew Rushworth and Rogier Mars. Exciting! I am funded by a Marie Curie Inter-European Fellowship within the European […]

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starting as a postdoc in the Neurobiology of Language group

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From the first of December 2013 I started a new position as a postdoctoral researcher in the Neurobiology of Language group led by Peter Hagoort at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In collaboration with Oxford we will be investigating the neuroanatomy of the human […]

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Marie Curie Fellowship awarded!

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I have been awarded the Marie Curie Fellowship! From mid 2014 I will start as a research fellow at the University of Oxford in the labs of Matthew Rushworth and Rogier Mars. I will work on a two year project titled “Wiring Cognition: How the organisation of our brain enables uniquely human abilities“.

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See you at SfN 2013, San Diego

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Arjen Stolk and I are presenting our work at this year’s Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego. Both his talk ‘Cerebral coherence between communicators marks the emergence of meaning‘ and my poster ‘Kinematics of communicative pointing‘ are scheduled for Wednesday, November 13th (Arjen’s talk: 8:15 – 8:30, location: 4; my poster: 14:00-15:00, location: Halls […]

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Arjen Stolk on communication in PNAS

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Arjen Stolk elucidates how our brain constructs communicative meaning in a paper in PNAS. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) he shows how brain areas involved in communicating are already pre-emptively loaded, possibly coding the communicative context, already preceding the interaction itself. This mechanisms is active both during production and comprehension of a communicative signal.

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Toolkit for Transcranial Brain Stimulation (2-4 sept)

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Nijmegen, September 2-4, 2013 This intensive three-day toolkit course will provide in-depth knowledge on transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial current stimulation (tDCS/tACS). The course will cover both basic and advanced topics, including multi-modal applications of non-invasive brain stimulation (with a focus on TMS/tDCS and EEG). The course involves a series of lectures, discussions, and […]

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I’m a PhD now!

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It’s all done and official. I had a great day on the 23rd of March. Many thanks to my supervisors, examiners, and all the colleagues, friends and family that joined me in the celebration!

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my thesis has arrived!

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Yes!!! My thesis has been printed! You can get a (digital) flavour of the magic here. If you prefer a real-life version of the thesis over a pdf one, let me know, I might have a few left. For those of you who think: “Ah, good. There is a Dutch summary.” I’m sorry to disappoint […]

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I started my postdoc at the DCCN

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I finished my thesis in March 2011 and accepted a postdoctoral position in Dr. Ivan Toni’s lab at the Donder Institute, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging. I can’t wait to make a transition (albeit a small one) into a new field (intentional communication) and start new research projects.

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