Biomarkers

Blije gezichten en andere beloningen: aandacht voor positieve informatie als beschermend mechanisme tegen depressie

This is a Dutch summary of my PhD thesis Happy faces and other rewards. Positieve informatie roept vaak sterke reacties op, maar niet bij iedereen. Wie minder sterk reageert op positieve informatie heeft een zogenaamde lage positieve bias. In dit …

Happy Faces and Other Rewards: Different Perspectives on a Bias Away from Positive and Toward Negative Information as an Underlying Mechanism of Depression

People generally show strong responses to positive or rewarding experiences, for example, winning a prize or seeing someone smile. However, not all people respond the same to positive information; some people show weaker responses to positive …

Alpha-amylase reactivity and recovery patterns in anhedonic young adults performing a tandem skydive

Background Anhedonia (loss of pleasure) is characterized by low responsiveness to rewards and, by virtue of being one of the two core symptoms of depression, by altered responses to stress. We investigated the effect of an acute stress experience …

Measuring BDNF in saliva using commercial ELISA: Results from a small pilot study

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a protein often studied in psychiatric populations. Commercial ELISA kits have been validated for measuring BDNF in blood plasma and serum, but blood collection is an invasive method which cannot always be …

Positive bias and mental health

My main line of research concerns positive bias, i.e., the phenomenon that many people see the world more brightly and more positive than it really is, and whether and at what ages individual differences in positive bias are associated with differences in mental and social functioning.