Adolescence Archives

Kayla is a postdoctoral researcher in the Erasmus SYNC Lab. Her work focuses on how adolescents and young adults grow up in a complex and rapidly changing world, marked by various societal challenges (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, poverty). She specifically examines how adolescent and young adult wellbeing is shaped by socioeconomic hardship and future uncertainty. Kayla aims to shed light on how the developing brain adapts to challenges in the social environment, and how such neural challenges may foster resilience. Which vulnerabilities put some adolescents at risk to be disproportionably hit by societal challenges, and are there protective factors that might buffer against the potential negative impact on wellbeing. Additionally, Kayla investigates self-disclosure in the context of societal topics, which may be viewed as political or controversial (e.g., should adolescents aged 16 or 17 years have the right to vote?).

She is co-founder and social media officer of the YoungXperts youth participation platform. She is passionate about connecting science to society and policy. Kayla uses participatory approaches to actively involve youth in science and policy. She also engages in science communication and outreach activities.

Kayla is member of the ambition team on youth participation. Since 2020, Kayla is member of the Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee of the international Flux Society. She co-leads the Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) affinity group. Kayla was awarded the PhD Excellence Award for Best Societal Impact by the Erasmus Graduate School of Social Sciences and the Humanities in 2022. She was also awarded a travel grant by Flux Society in 2022. Together with her YoungXperts colleagues she received the Open Science Award for the collaborative work on inclusive youth participation within the YoungXperts platform. In 2022 Kayla was selected as Faces of Science by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Young Academy (De Jonge Akademie), and NEMO Kennislink.Green has a background in psychology (Utrecht University, 2015). After obtaining her bachelor degree, she continued with the research master Neuroscience & Cognition (2018) and the clinical master Neuropsychology (2017) at Utrecht University. She did her clinical internship at the Neurology and Geriatrics Department of the Spijkenisse Medisch Centrum, where is also obtained her BAPD (certificate in psychodiagnostics). She obtained her PhD in 2024 (cum laude) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Under supervision of prof. dr. Eveline Crone and dr. Suzanne van de Groep. Kayla examined the socioeconomic, social and neural determinants of wellbeing across adolescence and young adulthood.

Sophie Sweijen is a PhD candidate in the SYNC lab. She focuses on the behavioral and neural developmental trajectories of prosocial behavioral and societal contributions during adolescence.

Her work is part of the longitudinal ERC consolidator ‘Brainlinks’ project, in which 142 adolescents are followed over the course of three years. The project focuses on the development of prosocial behavior in young individuals, using a variety of techniques (e.g. fMRI, laboratory tasks and questionnaires). She also works on the Urban Rotterdam Project examining how the social environment interacts with individual characteristics on developmental outcomes. Here, she specifically investigates adolescents’ opportunities for prosocial actions during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sophie completed her research master ‘Developmental Psychology’ at Leiden University in 2019. Her main interests lie in the social world of young individuals. During her studies, she assisted in multiple behavioral and fMRI studies investigating social learning, peer relations and risk taking in adolescence. For her master thesis, she focused on the developmental changes and individual differences in learning through social interactions.

Yara Toenders is a postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus SYNC lab. She is interested in mental health during development from childhood to young adulthood.

Yara previously did her PhD at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia. During her PhD she focused on depression in young people, more specifically on the onset of depression and the heterogeneity of depression. She was also involved in the international ENIGMA MDD consortium, a worldwide effort to combine data to increase our understanding of depression.

Before her PhD, Yara obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and finished a Neurobiology research master at the University in Amsterdam. During this Master she first gained experience with neuroimaging in young people. At the Amsterdam Medical Centre, she studied brain connectivity in children with a posttraumatic stress disorder.

Suzanne van de Groep is an assistant professor at the department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam and affiliated with the Erasmus SYNC Lab. Her research mainly focuses on the behavioral and neural development of prosocial behaviors in adolescence.

Prosocial behaviors (i.e., behaviors that benefit others) such as giving, cooperating, and helping are essential for forming and maintaining social relationships, which is an important developmental goal in adolescence. Suzanne’s work specifically focuses on the development of different types of prosocial behaviors, and how this is shaped by social contexts and individual differences. Her most recent endeavors include the investigation of social temporal discounting, online prosocial behaviors, longitudinal brain development within individuals related to giving, as well as adolescents’ wellbeing.

Suzanne has a background in developmental psychology and completed her research masters in Leiden in 2016 (cum laude). During her PhD, Suzanne has played a large role in setting up an ERC consolidator project called ‘Brainlinks’, a longitudinal three-wave fMRI study in which 142 adolescents and their parents were followed over the course of several years. To gain a better understanding of prosocial development, this project includes fMRI tasks, experimental tasks, questionnaires, hormone data, and daily diaries (see Projects for a video on the Brainlinks project). In February 2022, she defended her PhD dissertation called ‘Growing in Generosity? Unraveling the effects of benefactor-, beneficiary-, and situational characteristics on the development of giving and its neural correlates in adolescence’, which was supervised by Prof. Eveline Crone and Dr. Kiki Zanolie. After her PhD, she did a 9-month postdoc at the Erasmus SYNC lab to extend her fundamental developmental neuroscience research with citizen science projects and a broader perspective on how adolescents’ role in society shapes their social behavior and wellbeing.

Apart from gaining a better understanding of prosocial development, Suzanne has a passion for connecting science and society, for example through science communication and citizen science projects, as well as mentoring, talent development, and recognition and rewards in academia.

Suzanne was awarded several grants and prizes, including a grant to visit UCLA during her PhD, two EGSH PhD Excellence Awards (best societal impact and best poster), a DPECS Dragon’s Den seed fund, and a NWA Science Communication Grant (together with her YoungXperts colleagues).