The next instuif, 27th of May we will have an international guest speaking: Assistent professor Murat Yucel from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne. He currently heads the Impulsive & Compulsive Behaviour Group at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, and is a Research Leader in Neuroimaging at ORYGEN Youth Health Research Centre.

We would like to invite you to come to the instuif on the 27th of May 16:00, in the AMC (PA3-102) to listen to the following talk:

Drug Use, Teenage Brain Development and Mental Health:
Insights from neuroscience

Early onset use or frequent substance use is consistently associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes, including cognitive difficulties, structural brain changes and mental health problems. For example, studies suggest that heavy cannabis use is associated with learning and memory problems, brain changes and increased risk for psychotic symptoms. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of a dose-response effect, and the risks are even greater if cannabis exposure occurs during adolescence. Recent advances in brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience, combined with a better understanding of normal brain development and genetics have led to a better understanding of the specific biological mechanisms in the brain that underpin this relationship. In this talk, I will discuss recent evidence from our brain imaging work in cannabis, opiate and inhalant abusing populations to highlight the neurodevelopmental harms associated with adolescent substance abuse. Our recent findings raise questions regarding the use of drugs during adolescence and have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between drug use, brain development and mental health, as well as prevention and early intervention approaches.

See you hopefully then!

Anneke,  Dick,  Stella & Zsuzsika

Hope to see you next Thursday!

Anneke, Dick, Zsuzsika, and Stella

fmriinstuif@gmail.com

p.s. Let us know if you want to discuss an article, topic, or would like to present your data!

Date: 24 September
Time: 16.30
Location/Room: AMC, PA0-126 (Dept. Psychiatry)
Theme: Methods

We will discuss the topic/problem of  “double dipping”, based on the article by Kriegeskorte et al, Nature Neuroscience, 2009.
Required reading: the attached article: Circular analysis in systems neuroscience: the dangers of double dipping

Also, starting now, fMRI instuif will be organized by Dick, Anneke, Zsuzsika and Stella.
Thanks a lot to Marie José for all her organisation efforts in the last years, and also for setting up the website!: Marie-José finished her PhD and will no longer work in Amsterdam. She’ll continue her career in Groningen.

Hope to see you next Friday!

Anneke, Dick, Zsuzsika, and Stella

fmriinstuif@gmail.com

p.s. Let us know if you want to discuss an article, topic, or would like to present your data!

We hope you all had a nice summer break!

This year, we’ll start with a student presentation by Marissa Zwan, student of Zsuzsika Sjoerds. The presentation of Marissa is the result of a 5-month internship. In these months, Marissa studied impulsivity and response inhibition in alcohol dependants. Three groups of participants, recruited from the Netherlands Study on Depression and Anxiety, were included: alcohol dependants with comorbidity depression and/or anxiety, participants with depressive/anxiety disorder and healthy controls. Her goal was to study brain function related to impulsivity and response inhibition in alcohol dependants. In this instuif, Marissa will present her main results.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Date: 9 September 2010

Location: VUmc, Faculty of Medicine, B4-32

Time: 16.00

Best wishes,

Dick, Anneke, & Marie-José

fmriinstuif@gmail.com

MJ

Friday 25 June we’ll organize an ‘fMRI-instuif poster session’. This session will start at 15.00 and end at 17.00/17.30.

We invite all researchers from the AMC and VUmc to present their work by means of a traditional printed poster or an e-poster.

The session will be held in the large conference room of the Psychiatry of the AMC (PA3-101 en 102: third floor).

We hope for a fruitful session with lots of interaction and for the start of collaborations. As a large variety of methods and processes are used/studied in our group, we are sure this will happen.

A short selection of our in-house expertise:

- Structural imaging: Voxel bases morphometry analyses for T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted images

- Functional imaging: BOLD fMRI and Arterial Spin Labeling for task related and ‘resting state’ fMRI

- Connectivity analyses of functional data

- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

- Deep brain stimulation (DBS)

- Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS)

- Magnet0encephalography (MEG)

- Psychiatry (anxiety disorders, depression, psychosis, addiction)

- Neurology (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Myclonus, Mild Cognitive impairment, EMG in fMRI)

- Sleep

- Cancer & cognition

- Obesitas

and much more………

Could you please let us know (before 20 June) if you would like to present your poster or e-poster (in that case, please bring your own laptop) and let us know what the title of your poster will be.

So, we hope to see you all!

Best wishes,

Dick, Anneke & Marie-José

fmriinstuif@gmail.com

Title of talk: Neurophysiological correlates of cognitive flexibility in obsessive-compulsive disorder’.

Next instuif: 28 May,

Location: AMC, dept of psychiatry, PA-0-126

Time: 16.30

fmriinstuif@gmail.com