Disa Sauter (FMG)
Henkjan Honing (FGW)

An ABC guest colloquium in September 2023 will feature Dr Sam Mehr, School of Psychology, University of
Auckland and Child Study Center, Yale University. Dr Mehr received his PhD from Harvard in 2017 on the
topic of the psychology of music. His work combines approaches from the psychological, anthropological, and
computational sciences to ask fundamental questions around what music is, how music works, and why music
exists. Dr Mehr is also one of the pioneers of the citizen science movement, which has important implications
for the ways in which researchers from a wide range of disciplines can connect with the broader public. 

ABC Colloquium Samuel Mehr

[granted July 2023]

Jorien Treur (AUMC)
Margot van de Weijer (AUMC)

There are many research groups in Amsterdam that are in some way integrating genetics in their research, but with very different specializations, ranging from gene-environment interplay to imaging and to clinical and developmental psychology. Using the ABC Themes & Transversal Perspectives Grant, we will bring together all genetics researchers in Amsterdam during a Genetics Network Amsterdam meeting. With this meeting, we aim to stimulate collaborations between diverse research groups and discuss science communication about genetics research to the general public. In addition, we want to use this opportunity to actively connect Amsterdam genetics researchers with ABC, by presenting the different ABC themes and transversal perspectives (and the research that takes place in these domains). In doing so, we can find out where ABC’s research intersects with the research of the researchers present at the meeting, and in this way find out where there are still missed opportunities for collaboration.

[granted July 2023]

Steven Scholte (FMG)
Iris Groen (FNWI, Informatics)

This event was dedicated to the exploration of Neuro-AI.

[granted May 2024]

Anja Lok (AMC)
Stanley Brul (FNWI)

Microbiome research has reshaped our understanding of health, particularly the gut-brain connection, linking microbial imbalances to conditions like depression. The microbiome's role in mood and behavior is influenced by diet, with modern, processed foods potentially disrupting gut bacteria. This growing field promises to transform medical and nutritional practices by rethinking humans as "holobionts," organisms that are part human and part microbe.

The interdisciplinary project INSIDE OUT combines microbiome science with Art through immersive experiences designed by Polymorf to engage the public. Using virtual reality (VR), sensory devices, and interactive dining, the project highlights how gut bacteria impact mental health. Experiences like Dinner for Two, Haute Cuisine, and Drinkable Memories offer unique ways to explore this relationship, creating deeper public awareness.

Supported by experts from microbiology and psychiatry, INSIDE OUT aims to make complex research tangible, fostering dialogue on the microbiome’s crucial role in well-being. The project will be showcased at museums, festivals, and public places, including Amsterdam UMC.

Anja Lok & Stanley Brul

Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science
Amsterdam Microbiome Expertise Center
Polymorf

[granted October 2024]

Linguistic and non-linguistic top-down influences on perception captured through oscillatory activity.

Monique Flecken (FGW)
Conrado Bosman (FNWI)

The way we see the world around us is very much influenced by what we know and what we expect; for example, we are more likely to see an (ambiguous) image as left- or right-oriented when beforehand a very brief flash of light is presented on the respective side of the screen. Prior information thus biases our perception. Does this also hold for linguistic information? What about words cueing the orientation just before an image is presented? Do these cues bias the perceptual system in similar, or different ways? Psycholinguistic research suggests that words are ‘special’, in that they cue a category, rather than a specific exemplar of a concept: the word ‘dog’ can refer to a chihuahua or a bulldog. When we see a dog of any kind we are perfectly ‘prepared’ for it because of the linguistic label. In perception research, little attention is paid to language as a source of prior knowledge. We address, using neuroimaging, whether there is something special about language for our perceptual system.

[granted July 2023]

Umberto Olcese (FNWI) 
Lucia Talamini (FMG)

The sleeping brain, while less receptive to external stimuli compare to wakefulness, still processes sensory inputs. Recently, we have shown that we can manipulate individual memories during sleep using a technique called closed-loop neurostimulation (CLNS). This method targets auditory stimuli to specific phases of brain oscillations during sleep, allowing for precise memory enhancement or suppression. By focusing on REM sleep's theta oscillations, vital for emotional memory processing, we will further explore to what extent this technique can be used to modulate memory. To address this question, we will compare human EEG recordings to high-density recordings in rats, thus revealing how auditory stimulation affects theta oscillations at the circuit level and, at the same time, in a translational approach. Our goal is to understand emotional memory consolidation at the neural level, enabling  immediate repercussion for clinical research and clinical practice, with implications for treatments  to disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

[granted July 2023]

Disa Sauter (FMG)
Floris Roelofsen (FNWI) 
Roza Kamiloğlu (FMG)

Nonverbal vocalisations, such as laughter, sighs, moans, and grunts, are fundamental elements of human behaviour. Yet despite their significance, scientific exploration of human vocalisations has been limited, particularly in terms of understanding what leads us to produce vocalisations.
In the current project, we will leverage the extensive ethnographic dataset of the Electronic Human Relations Area Files, a comprehensive collection of digitized high-quality ethnographies from 315 world cultures. We will produce a nonverbal vocalisations ethnography, which will be analyzed using computational methods, including both clustering analysis and supervised machine learning.
This project will establish whether different kinds of nonverbal vocalisations occur universally, what triggers them, and what primary functions they serve.

[granted July 2023]

Lindy-Lou Boyette (FMG, Clinical Psychology)
Jentien Vermeulen (AUMC, Psychiatry, Dep. Early Psychosis)
Lieuwe De Haan (AUMC, Psychiatry, Dep. Early Psychosis)

Cannabis can exacerbate psychotic symptoms due to its psychoactive compound THC  (tetrahydrocannabinol). Nevertheless, there is a high prevalence of cannabis use in individuals with psychotic disorders. Interventions effectively targeting this comorbidity are currently lacking.  However, CBD (cannabidiol), a second, non-psychoactive cannabis compound, has emerged as a  potential therapeutic agent due to its antipsychotic properties. Additionally, evidence suggests  that CBD reduces craving and withdrawal in cannabis use disorder. Therefore we propose CBD as  an adjacent therapy for cannabis use in psychosis, targeting both aspects of the dual diagnosis  simultaneously.

This support grant will be utilized in hiring research assistance to apply for funding 
for conducting a placebo-controlled CBD trial in dual diagnosis. It would be a new collaboration between the UvA Clinical Psychology and the UMC Amsterdam and UMC Utrecht Early Psychosis  departments. Ultimately, our aim to create a cross-disciplinary expert group on comorbid  psychosis and substance use research and care. 

[granted May 2024]

Romke Rouw (FMG, PSY, Brain and Cognition)
Jelle Zuidema (FNWI, ILLC)
Nicholas Root (FMG, PSY, Brain and Cognition)

In grapheme-color synesthesia, letters evoke specific, automatic, and consistent color sensations (e.g., “F is burgundy-red”). Our ABC-Project (2019-2023) measured synesthetic letter-to-color associations in 15 languages, and revealed that linguistic properties (e.g., orthographic, semantic, phonetic) influence the letter-to-color pairings.

These findings highlight how grapheme-color synesthesia is not only interesting in its own right; it offers a unique way to examine letter representations. Currently, we employ Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) to measure synesthetes’ neural activity to (achromatic) letters. We hypothesize that similarities in a synesthetes' colors (behavioral measure) reflect similarities in their neural letter representations (LFA region) (neuroimaging measure).

Moreover, our ABC Project revealed that non-synesthetes (asked to pick colors with letters) will show similar letter-color patterns as synesthetes. Therefore, we extend our study to include more extensive behavioral/neuroimaging measurements in non-synesthetes. Can letter-color associations prove a non-invasive and cheap manner to reveal properties of (neural) letter representations?

[granted May 2024]

Sonia Ramotowska (FGW)
Maria Aloni (FGW) 
Ingmar Visser (FMG)

Negative quantifiers (e.g., fewer than n) can be verified by an empty set. For example, the sentence “Fewer than 3 dots are blue” is true when there are 2 or 1 blue dots (non-empty set scenarios) and when there are 0 blue dots (empty set). This last scenario is typically more difficult to conceive and neglected by language users (the neglect zero effect).

This project aims to contribute to the debate about the processing of negative quantifiers, particularly testing the empty set scenario. Its first novel contribution is to test the neglect zero effect by measuring the online processing of the empty set scenario with ERPs. The second contribution involves the combination of neurophysiological measures with eye-tracking. For example, we will test if the empty set scenarios lead to a different visual exploration of the pictures (for which sentence verification needs to be carried out) than other scenarios.

[granted October 2024)