Contact Details

Neuroimaging Research Group
University Medical Center Utrecht
Dept. of Child- and Adolescent Psychiatry
Heidelberglaan 100
3584 CX Utrecht
The Netherlands

Room A01.438

Tel.:  +31 (0)88 7553275
Fax.:  +31 (0)88 755 5487
E-mail:  J.vanBelle@umcutrecht.nl

Curriculum Vitae

I’m a second year PhD student at the NICHE lab. After completing my BA at the University of Utrecht I spent two years in Cambridge (UK) at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC-CBU) working on several research projects. One of these projects, on which I wrote my MSc thesis, looked at the relation between  alertness, dual task load and spatial attention. This  sparked my interest in the neurobiological background of attention and the influence of alertness and cognitive control on attention.

In my PhD project I investigate the neural correlates of cognitive subtypes in ADHD. I will screen a large number of children on their behavioural performance on computer tasks developed to measure cognitive control( a go-nogo task), expectancy violation (the ‘cheesetask’) and reward sensitivity (the ‘spongers’ task). Based on their performance on these computer tasks  I will then make subgroups, and collect fMRI data and genetic data of the children in these subgoups.
 By doing this I hope to find neurobiological markers that are related to specific behaviour, rather than to the broad definition of ADHD, and gain insight in the neurobiological background of cognitive control .
I am specifically interested in brain development in children, and how the development of neural networks in the brain is related to  both normal behaviour and psychiatric disorders .