Dr. Jorien Treur and dr. Elseline Hoekzema have been awarded a prestigious Vidi grant by the Dutch Research Council. Read more about the laureates of the Vidi grant on the website of NWO.
Vidi grant for dr. Jorien Treur
Globally, there’s an urgent need to understand how modern behaviours like vaping and sedentary lifestyles might cause mental health problems. Traditional studies can’t always answer such questions, therefore researchers use advanced methods like genetic analyses and hypothetical trial simulations. However, each of these methods has their limitations and can’t provide definitive answers by itself. To address this, the concept of “triangulation” is used, combining multiple methods to minimize biases. Dr. Jorien Treur has been awarded a Vidi grant of the Dutch Research Council for her project ‘Harnessing triangulation to uncover next-gen risk factors for mental health problems’.
In her Vidi project, Treur aims to refine triangulation techniques and apply them to clarify the relationship of vaping and sedentary behaviour with mental health, utilising diverse causal inference methods and datasets.
This type of research raises many questions, like: what does triangulation actually mean? Which methods can and cannot be meaningfully combined? Can you quantitatively integrate results from different research methods? How can diversity in study samples and an intersectional approach strengthen triangulation?
Triangulation Framework
In this project, Treur will develop a novel, unified triangulation framework which includes a triangulation bias catalogue, a quantitative triangulation method, and triangulation reporting guidelines. These tools will set new standards and foster more rigorous, transparent research practices across multiple disciplines. Additionally she aims to apply this framework to answer the following causal questions: does vaping causally impact mental health? And does sedentary behaviour causally impact mental health?
Co-creation
Jorien Treur explains how she envisions collecting data and connecting with her target audience: “I will use multiple existing datasets spanning various age groups, nationalities, and ethnicities, as well as start a new cohort study in secondary schools to collect much-needed high-quality data on vaping, sedentary behaviour, and mental health. This will involve co-creation and focus group sessions with youth, as well as guest lectures and an information day organised by me and my colleagues, to provide schools with reliable knowledge about these topics.”
Vidi grant for dr. Elseline Hoekzema
Previously, it has been discovered that pregnancy renders changes in brain structure and function, which relate to mother-infant bonding. This leads to new questions addressing peripartum brain changes. To answer these questions, dr. Elseline Hoekzema has been awarded a Vidi grant of the Dutch Research Council. Her project is titled: ‘Mind the Mother: A Spotlight on the Maternal Brain and Hidden Disorders of Maternal Mental Health’.
In her Vidi project, Hoekzema uses a three step investigation. First, she studies the brain in women suffering from mother-infant bonding disorders. These are serious postpartum conditions that can severely impact both mother and child but for which the neural bases are not known yet. In addition, Hoekzema and her team investigate pregnancy-induced neuroplasticity using animal studies. Finally, they investigate the impact of a second pregnancy on a woman’s brain and herneural responses to infants.