Research

With non-invasive brain stimulation, activity in certain brain areas can be enhanced or inhibited. These methods usually have only very few side effects. We mostly use transcranial direct current stimulation to increase (or decrease) cortical excitability.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a method developed to exhibit regional, time-varying changes in brain metabolism. These metabolic changes can be due to task-induced cognitive changes or due to unregulated processes during rest.

During real-time fMRI neurofeedback, participants are instructed to regulate their brain activity in a specific brain area. The current brain activity is measured in real-time and data pre-processing as well as data analysis is performed with dedicated software. Feedback is provided to the participant in the scanner via a projector in the form of a thermometer icon, with the temperature reading indicating the current level of brain activity. The participants perform several training runs, which are composed of baseline blocks and up- or down-regulation blocks. During the regulation blocks, the target-level indicator of the thermometer display moves up or down, indicating that the participants should in- or decrease activity in the targeted brain region. With the help of feedback information, participants can learn to voluntarily control their brain activity in the targeted brain area.

In collaboration with Amsterdam UMC (Prof. Dr. Charlotte Teunissen), we use blood-based biomarkers (e.g., amyloid or tau) to test associations with response to interventions.