Can’t wait to visit Japan, Feb 17-22. Get in touch if you would like to meet up and talk about all things ultrasound and neuromodulation. I’m also an expert, by birth, on Nijntje/Miffy Usakochan. Tue 18/2 2pm: QST/NIRS, ChibaWed 19/2 10am: Kyorin University, TokyoWed 19/2 2pm: RIKEN CBS, TokyoThurs 20/2 2pm: Juntendo University, TokyoFri 21/2: […]
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FUN2019, 23-24 Sept, Oriel College, Oxford
#FUN2019 is nearly here! On 23-24 September we will be hosting the symposium on Focused Ultrasound Neuromodulation at Oriel College, Oxford. A long list of amazing speaker, talking about the latest and greatest in ultrasound neuromodulation. Drinks and college dinner included. Can’t wait to see you there! For more information, visit fun.web.ox.ac.uk
moreAssistant Professor @ Donders Institute
I started a new position as Assistant Professor at the Donders Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. I’ll be working on all things brain stimulation, with a special focus on ultrasound neuromodulation… So, if you want to join me in building a new future for non-invasive brain stimulation, get in touch!
moreinterview for MindStew podcast
I joined the brilliant MindStew podcast. Check out the episode. I had a great time Josh, thanks for hosting me!
moreNature Reviews Neuroscience features our work
Nature Reviews Neuroscience reported on our work: Making waves with ultrasound.
morePNAS highlights the promise of our work
Our work was featured in the Journal Club of PNAS: Low-intensity focused ultrasound shows promise as tool to probe deep brain function.
moreinterview for Belgian Radio 1 “Nieuwe Feiten”
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 […]
moreultrasound neuromodulation in Dutch national newspaper “de Volkskrant”
I was interviewed for the Dutch national newspaper “de Volkskrant”. Have fun with google translate: Ultrageluid verandert hersenactiviteit: mogelijke methode om depressie te bestrijden. I was very impressed with the quality of the figure they made on their own accord, which interestingly featured diffuse, rather than focused ultrasound.
moreoops, I’ve let my website be hacked
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 […]
morejuggle with human brains, goggle at macaque slices
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 […]
moremeet our new chimps
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 […]
moreLori Dershowitz graduated in neuroscience MSc, with distinction!
Congrats Lori on obtaining your neuroscience MSc from Oxford! Well done! Your distinction is very well deserved. I wish you all the best of luck with your grad school applications in the US.
morethe world upside down: the ventral stream leads dorsal processing
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 […]
moreWhy my phone doesn’t understand me, yet…
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 […]
moredifferences between techniques or species?
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. […]
moreFranz-Xaver Neubert passed his viva!
Congrats dr. Neubert! Such a brilliant thesis, impressive accomplishment. Where is the champagne?
moreRogier Mars on comparing brain connectivity in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Led by Rogier Mars we describe in a new paper in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews how the brain’s organisation can be investigated across humans and other primates. Using the same non-invasive technique across species we can directly compare brains, regions, and/or connections in an quantitative and intuitive manner. The trick is to map how regions […]
moreDavide Folloni passed his MSc viva, now starts as grad student in the lab
Congrats Davide Folloni on obtaining your neuroscience MSc from Oxford! Well done! I’m delighted to welcome you as a PhD student in the lab. So happy you are sticking around with us.
moreVanessa Johnen on TMS and connectivity in eLife
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 […]
moreArjen Stolk on sharing concepts in PNAS
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 […]
moreDr. Moniek Munneke!
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.
moreRogier Mars on comparative neuroanatomy in Frontiers of Neuroscience
Headed by Rogier Mars we published a paper in Frontiers of Neuroscience disseminating the pitfalls and promises of using non-invasive neuroimaging tools for comparative neuroanatomy.
moreDr. Arjen Stolk, cum laude
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 […]
morestarting as a Marie Curie research fellow at the University of Oxford
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 […]
moretalk at Donders Toolkit for Transcranial Brain Stimulation, 2014
I will be giving several lectures on advanced transcranial brain stimulation at the Donders Toolkit on 24th-27th June in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
morepublic lecture at Westminster Library, London
On the 31st of May I will be speaking at the I N F R A closing event in the Westminster Reference Library in London about how our brain waves are coupled when we communicate with each other.
moreTV appearance on “Proefkonijnen”
On 10th of February at 20:30 Jolien Francken and I will feature in an episode of “Proefkonijnen”, a popular science show on the Dutch national television.
morestarting as a postdoc in the Neurobiology of Language group
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 […]
moreMarie Curie Fellowship awarded!
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“.
moreArjen Stolk on communication in Cortex
Arjen Stolk publishes a paper in Cortex showing how the anterior-inferior temporal-parietal-junction (TPJ) area is critical to learn the meaning of one’s others actions in a communicative interaction.
moreAnke Murillo Oosterwijk graduated, she’s now a MSc!
Anke Murillo Oosterwijk obtained her master thesis on October 18th 2013. Congratulations! She is now working jointly in the labs of Ivan Toni and at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and Frank Hartmann at Erasmus University.
moreSee you at SfN 2013, San Diego
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 […]
moreArjen Stolk on communication in PNAS
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.
morebook review of The Neurobiology of the Prefrontal cortex by Passingham and Wise
Rogier Mars and I wrote a book review of Passingham and Wise latest book: The Neurobiology of the Prefrontal cortex: Anatomy, Evolution, and the Origin of Insight.
moreToolkit for Transcranial Brain Stimulation (2-4 sept)
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 […]
morepaper on parieto-frontal sensorimotor circuits in Journal of Neuroscience
The dorsolateral (aIPS) parieto-frontal network informs the dorsomedial (sPOS) network on how to specify a grasp plan – a TMS-EEG paper in JNeurosci.
moreI’m a PhD now!
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!
moremy thesis has arrived!
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 […]
morepaper on aIPS and grasping in Journal of Neuroscience
aIPS structures a grasp plan based on abstract and current information – a TMS-EEG paper in JNeurosci.
moreI started my postdoc at the DCCN
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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