Radboud Center for Decision Science

🔵 Tübingen Systems Neuroscience Symposium 2025 is here! 🔵

#SNS2025 brings together leading international researchers in system neuroscience 🧠

Join us for plenary lectures, poster sessions and social events on 6️⃣-7️⃣ October 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣5️⃣

registration is open here 👉 meg.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/sns_2025/

The governance & behavioral challenges of generative artificial intelligence’s hypercustomization capabilities - Christoph M. Abels, Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez, Jason W. Burton, Dawn L. Holford, Levin Brink... Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is changing human–machine interactions and the broader information ecosystem. Much as social media algorithms persona...

Generative AI (GenAI) can do more than just answer questions - it can tailor its responses based on users’ preferences, habits, and even emotional tone.

We call this capability hypercustomization - explored in our new paper in Behavioral Science & Policy. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

NWO grants to explore brain circuits and baby’s learning | Radboud University Two projects have been awarded Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) Open Competition M grants of €400,000 by NWO. Their work will shed new light on how our brains support speech and learning.

Two Donders Institute projects just received €400K NWO grants. @stephforkel.bsky.social studies speech circuits in Parkinson’s for better treatments. Meyer & @robertoostenveld.bsky.social track 200 infants to see how early brain learning shapes language & social skills.

www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...

🧠✨ Beauty of the Brain

This time in our Donders Beauty of the Brain series: a stunning image of a hippocampal brain slice, captured with a confocal microscope.

Discover more at www.dondersdiscovers.nl/en/

New research tackles stress and aggression with virtual reality | Radboud University The CONTEXT project has been awarded nearly €7 million from the National Science Agenda (NWA) for an ambitious project to reduce stress and aggression among police officers and at-risk youth.

🚓🕶️⌚ VR vs stress & aggression

Nearly €7M from the NWA for #CONTEXT: reducing stress and aggression in police & at-risk youth. Smartwatches + VR teach early stress detection & emotion control.

🔗 www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...

Coming from #law to #psychology to #neuroscience, I’ve often asked: where do I belong? This piece is a tribute to the value of crossing disciplinary lines and look at the inherent challenges which I continue to both embrace & tackle during my PhD @dondersinst.bsky.social @decisioncenter.bsky.social

Thrilled to share an article in @natrevpsychol.nature.com! 🧠 I reflect on how a PNAS piece has helped me see that #interdisciplinarity is not merely beneficial, but vital, for tackling real-world problems @dondersinst.bsky.social @decisioncenter.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Janna Vrijsen appointed as endowed Professor of Transdiagnostic Psychopathology 30 June 2025

🎉✨ Janna Vrijsen appointed Professor of #Transdiagnostic #Psychopathology: ‘I look forward to teaching researchers and psychologists to look beyond mental disorders. It is also my goal to establish exercise as a treatment for depression and other mental disorders.’

www.radboudumc.nl/en/news-item...

Interdisciplinarity opens new frontiers for decision science

Journal Club by Sarah Vahed
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

🎉I am super excited and extremely grateful for having received an ERC Advanced grant #ERCAdG 🎉🎉 🎉 Thanks so much to my team, at Radboud and the #donders institute, my collaborators and all who have helped me. I can’t wait to get started! 🥰

@dondersinst.bsky.social
@erc.Europe.EU
#horizonEU

Global access to brain science: OHBM launches channel with 1,000+ talks | Radboud University What if you could journey back in time to hear world-leading neuroscientists present the ideas that shaped today's brain science? A new open-access initiative led by researchers from the Donders Insti...

🎥🌍 Over 1,000 neuroscience talks now free on YouTube and published at @apertureohbm.bsky.social. 🧠 “Now anyone, anywhere can binge-watch brain science like a box set,” says @stephforkel.bsky.social:

www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...

@alfiewearn.bsky.social @sitek.bsky.social @sofievalk.bsky.social

How the brain briefly remembers | Radboud University What happens in our brain when we briefly remember a phone number? According to neuroscientist Eelke Spaak, the answer may lie in rapid changes in the connections between brain cells. With a new NWO E...

🧠 📱 What happens in our brain when we briefly remember a phone number?

According Eelke Spaak, the answer may lie in rapid changes in the connections between brain cells. With a new NWO ENW-M #grant, he will investigate that hypothesis: 👇

www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...

Should we use AI to help cancer patients? In the PersOn project, AI expert Johan Kwisthout is developing artificial intelligence that helps doctors and cancer patients make difficult treatment choices.

❓⚖️ Should we use AI to support cancer patients and their doctors? Surgery or no surgery? Chemo or not? AI expert Johan Kwisthout believes humans should make these decisions.

His PersOn project aims to make AI a helpful partner to assist. 👇

www.radboudrecharge.nl/en/article/s...

Cover of the textbook used in the workshop

✨We are organising (again) an online workshop on Theoretical Modeling for PhD candidates and Master students in cognitive science and psychology. Check out the website and the schedule: Registration is open! (closes July 1, spaces are limited) 🧵1/n computationalcognitivescience.github.io/workshop/

From basic research to therapy: years of research translated into treatment anxiety disorders | Radboud University Why is it so difficult for people with anxiety disorders to do what they fear, even if they know it is safe? That question was at the heart of the DARE2APPROACH project led by Karin Roelofs running fr...

🔬 From basic research to therapy: DARE2APPROACH led by Karin Roelofs developed brain stimulation now tested in anxiety treatment. 🧠 “This is one of those projects that you can only do with a network like the Donders Institute”

🔗 More info: www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...
#ERC #MentalHealth #Neuroscience

Don't miss an exciting seminar talk!

Mon, 19 May @ 12.20 (EOS 01.150) Prof. Marco Castillo will present the talk “Welfare analysis with nonlinear budget sets and evidence from a large charitable fundraising experiment”.

The Department of Economics and Business Economics (Radboud NSM) is happy to welcome two wonderful guest speakers!
On Mon 19 May & Tue 20 May, Prof. Marco Castillo and Prof. Ragan Petrie (Texas A&M) are available for meetings (contact jan.schmitz@ru.nl).

Visitors muZIEum contribute to science | Radboud University A study by Marco Gandolfo shows how our brain processes information and how this differs by gender and age. 14 thousand participants in this study were visitors to the muZIEum in Nijmegen who took par...

👁️💡 How much do we really see?

@marco-gandolfo.bsky.social reveals how our brains process the unexpected, with surprising differences across age and gender.

With over 14,000 participants at muZIEum, it’s the largest public #inattentional #blindness experiment to date.

🔗 www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...

Do You Think Differently in Different Languages? The brain’s response to information depends on language’s grammatical structure

🧠 Language differences shape how your brain predicts sentences: Andrea E. Martin and her team reveal that the brain adapts to grammatical variations across languages when processing sentences. Read more in Scientific American: 👉

www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

#linguistics

What is consciousness? Two major theories prove (partly) incorrect | Radboud University Scientists have been divided for centuries by the question of what consciousness is. The two major theories have now been put to the test by a group of researchers and have been found to be partly inc...

🧠 What is consciousness? A study published in Nature tested two leading theories — #GNWT and #IIT — and found both partly wrong.

Instead of a setback, it's a new beginning. Full dataset now public. #OpenScience 👇

🔗 www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Excited to connect today to @bescipol.bsky.social, on behalf of @decisioncenter.bsky.social, to hear how #behaviouralscience can, has and should impact #policy & #practice.

How could we help Hannibal Lecter? | Radboud University Research by cognitive neuroscientist Inti Brazil shows that people with psychopathic traits have difficulty adapting their destructive behaviour. This is because their brain works differently from 'no...

👀 Think all psychopaths are pure evil 👿like Hannibal Lecter? @intibrazil.bsky.social's research says otherwise. Their brains 🧠 just work differently, making it harder to adapt their behaviour.

👉 Read more in Radboud Recharge:

www.radboudrecharge.nl/en/article/h...

Zelfs op de dag van haar promotie brengt deze onderzoeker parkinsonpatiënten in beweging - Vox magazine Een app die mensen met Parkinson helpt om meer te bewegen. Dat ontwikkelde Sabine Schootemeijer voor haar proefschrift, dat ze afgelopen vrijdag op Wereld Parkinsondag verdedigde.

Before defending her PhD on World Parkinson's Day, Sabine Schootemeijer walked across campus with Parkinson’s patients who used her app for a year to meet daily step goals. A digital coach kept them motivated. 👇

www.voxweb.nl/nieuws/zelfs...

#Parkinsons #Research #Innovation #WorldParkinsonsDay

The pioneering child development study monitoring babies’ brains A unique study is tracking the development of hundreds of babies whose parents have also been studied since birth.

🧠✨ How do babies learn to focus and think? A new BBC article features a global study tracking kids from 6 months to 5 years with insights from Donders researcher Rogier Kievit on how young minds grow.

Read more 👉 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Het Donders Instituut: van molecuul, tot mens tot maatschappij Het Donders Instituut in Nijmegen is een toonaangevend onderzoekscentrum op het gebied van hersenen, cognitie en gedrag. Dirk-Jan Melssen en Femke Maij vertellen over de oprichting, kracht en het maat...

📢 IntoNijmegen visited the Donders Institute! 🧠 They explored how we connect brain research with society and innovation. 📖 The article is in Dutch: "Het Donders Instituut: van molecuul, tot mens, tot maatschappij."

🔗 Read it here: www.intonijmegen.com/blijf-op-de-...

Expert session "Collecting data, reading minds?" | Radboud University This programme focuses on sharpening our view on neurotechnology: what opportunities and risks does neurotechnology bring, and can we expect neurotechnology to eventually gain access to our most intim...

Are you a policymaker, scientist or just curious about neurotech? 🧠

Join @theneurotecheu.bsky.social and Rathenau Instituut on 28 March in Nijmegen for “Collecting data, reading minds?” talks, lab tours & debates on neurotechnology and mental privacy.

🔗 www.ru.nl/en/about-us/...

BrainHelpDesk The BrainHelpDesk was founded to help find reliable information about the brain. Understanding the brain requires knowledge from many different disciplines, from psychology to computer science and fro...

The new BrainHelpDesk is live! 🧠
Still have questions after #BrainAwarenessWeek?
Ask them at 👉 www.brainhelpdesk.nl/en/ — or check if the answer’s already there! Experts explain brain science in clear, accessible language.

🎧 Kun je niet wachten tot vanavond? Luister dan nu al naar de nieuwste aflevering van de Radboud Science Podcast, met onderzoeker Esther Aarts over een intrigerende vraag: Kun je jezelf gelukkiger eten?👉 Luister hier:

creators.spotify.com/pod/show/rad...

🔬🧠 Join us at the Brain Museum for Brain Awareness Week! 🍽️👾🧠 Register for one of our exciting workshops about: 🍕Comfort food, 👽Inner aliens, and🧠 Memory. Reserve your seat: ww.ru.nl/baw2025

#BrainAwarenessWeek #BAW25 #BrainMuseum #Neuroscience #brain

❓ 🧠 Brein Pubquiz: hoe goed ken jij je eigen brein?

Test je kennis met verrassende vragen over de invloed van muziek tot bizarre breinfeiten en herkenbare situaties uit het dagelijks leven. Iedereen is welkom!

Meld je team online aan: 👉

www.ru.nl/donders-inst...