Neural development Archives

Sophie Sweijen is a postdoctoral researcher in the Erasmus SYNC lab. Using her background in developmental cognitive neuroscience, Sophie wants to make societal impact as a scientific researcher to help young individuals thrive in their social environment. Sophie works on the collaborative project PraatPower with MIND Us – an initiative focused on mental health among young individuals – in which societal dialogues will be held aimed to empower youth and mental health.

Under supervision of prof. dr. Eveline Crone, dr. Suzanne van de Groep, and dr. Lysanne te Brinke, Sophie worked on her PhD from 2021 to 2025 (defense planned on September 12, 2025) on prosocial behavior and societal contributions during adolescence. During her PhD, Sophie coordinated data collection of two longitudinal project. First, she coordinated and supervised the third wave of the behavioral and MRI data collection of the Brainlinks project, in which the aim was to examine the behavioral and neural development of prosocial behavior across adolescence. Second, together with the research team, Sophie set up and coordinated the online behavioral Urban Rotterdam Project, from the first wave in May 2020 to the ninth wave in October 2024. This project was initially set up to monitor young individuals’ wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but has subsequently been extended into a project consisting of nine waves across four years to monitor the development, wellbeing, and societal engagement among young people in the Rotterdam area.

During her PhD, Sophie also worked as a researcher on two projects commissioned by the Ministery of OCW, in which she implemented the YoungXperts method. First, she collaborated with Trimbos, ECIO, Pharos, and Utrecht University in a project on performance pressure among mbo-students. In addition, Sophie collaborated with ECBO to examine the needs of mbo-students for equal opportunities in their education. In these projects, Sophie organized focus groups with students and implemented a new participatory research tool, which was developed in co-creation with youth (workers), to come up with ‘take actions’ (solutions) together with young individuals themselves to improve their wellbeing.

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.

Ilse van de Groep is a Healthy Start Fellow working in the SYNC lab and the Clinical Psychology department of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research mainly focuses on the behavioral and neural development of antisocial behavior in young adulthood, and on strategies to support and motivate young adults with antisocial behavior and addiction problems to pursue their own long-term goals.

Ilse is passionate about finding mechanistic explanations for complex social behavior and greatly enjoys the most creative aspects of research and science communication. She often uses her creative skills to share newly acquired knowledge with a wider audience (e.g. blogging, workshops, e-magazines) or to create platforms and supporting media to enable this (e.g. websites, graphic design, photography).

Ilse has a background in Social and Health Psychology and completed her research Master in Utrecht in 2016. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant at the Experimental Psychopathology lab in Utrecht. In her PhD project (2018-2022), Ilse examined several mechanisms that underlie distinct developmental trajectories of social and antisocial behavior in emerging adulthood, with a specific focus on the neural correlates of self-concept, vicarious reward learning, social evaluation and aggression regulation. She was supervised by prof. Eveline Crone, dr. Marieke Bos, prof. Lucres Nauta-Jansen and prof. Arne Popma. In April 2023, she defended her dissertation called “Resisting, Desisting or Persisting? Neural Correlates of Antisocial and Psychopathic Pathways in Early Adulthood”.

Michelle Achterberg is an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies (DPECS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam and affiliated with the Erasmus SYNC-lab. Her research line focusses on the nature, nurture and neural mechanisms of social emotion regulation in childhood and adolescence.

Michelle is a junior PI on the Leiden Consortium on Individual Development (L-CID), a large longitudinal twin study on brain development in childhood and adolescence. Within this study Michelle specifically focusses on longitudinal brain development and its relation to social information processing and behavioral control. Additionally, she has expertise on functional and structural brain connectivity and investigates how brain development is influenced by genes and the environment.

Michelle has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Research Master’s degree in Neuroscience. During her masters, Michelle worked as a research intern at the department of child psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, where she gained her first experience with neuroimaging in children. During the second year of her studies, she joined the Brian and Development Research Center at Leiden University as a research assistant.

Following her passion for developmental neuroscience, Michelle started her PhD project in 2014 as part of the Leiden Consortium on Individual Development at Leiden University under supervision of Prof. dr. Eveline Crone, Prof. dr. Marian Bakermans- Kranenburg and Dr. Anna van Duijvenvoorde. Michelle received her PhD “Nature, nurture and neural mechanisms of social emotion regulation” in 2020 cum laude. For her PhD research, she received the Dutch Neurofederation PhD Thesis Prize in 2021.

During her postdoc at the SYNC lab (2020-2022), Michelle aimed to bridge the gap between fundamental science and societal challenges by incorporating co-creation methods to her studies, such as brain storm sessions and living labs. As an assistant professor, Michelle remains involved in SYNC’s research projects and societal impact initiatives.

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).