I was trained in physics, psychophysiology and neuropsychology and received a cum laude PhD in neurobiology from the faculty of medicine. My expertise covers sleep, circadian rhythms, cognition, aging, thermoregulation, imaging and acquisition and analysis of physiological and behavioral time-series.
Combining sleep and affective neuroscience, my team focuses on the role of REM sleep in the neural basis of emotion regulation. We have put forward an innovative integrative model of sleep, emotional processing, and psychopathology.
Another major focus is to unravel brain mechanisms involved in chronic insomnia. I founded a Sleep Registry (www.sleepregistry.nl ) to obtain a database of many citizen science volunteers that can donate subjective and performance data every once in a while online. Integrating their data with imaging and genetics cohort data facilitates progress in the understanding of risk factors, genetic predispositions and brain mechanisms involved in disturbed sleep and its consequences for cognition, emotion and consciousness. I have been so lucky to receive prestigious grants including the NWO-VIDI and VICI and twice the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. My team accomplished over 330 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals including NJEM, Jama, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Genetics, Archives of General Psychiatry, Psychological Bulletin, Brain, Current Biology and PNAS, which widely cited (February 2025: Scopus: 22,104 times, h-index 81; Google Scholar: 33,845 times, h-index 96). Our work is frequently exposed in media including NOS journaal and TED-X, and innovative findings have been front page news in e.g. De Volkskrant and The Times.