Projects
Nurturing adolescent adjustment in school and during leisure time: Testing the effectiveness of an ABC-mental health program Ghent University
Adolescence is a developmental period marked by declining intrinsic motivation and engagement for school work, while school-related stress, anxiety, and poor sleep peak compared to other life phases. Psychological need experiences play a pivotal role herein, with experiences of psychological need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) contributing to wellbeing and with experiences of psychological need frustration (pressure, ...
Improving Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health through a Participa-tory Parent-Child Commu-nication Intervention in Uganda Ghent University
Endocannabinoid signaling in adolescent mice: a possible brake on crossmodal brain plasticity KU Leuven
Monocular enucleation (ME) is a highly reproducible and well-characterized model to study brain plasticity at the level of the visual cortex. In adult mice, neuronal reactivation in the deprived visual areas is established by an early open eye potentiation phase followed by a whisker-driven crossmodal recovery. Previous research of the lab revealed an incomplete take-over by somatosensation in the medial monocular zone of adolescent mice due ...
The effects of an innovative Cognitive Control and Emotion Regulation Skills Training (CEST) on adolescent inpatients with depression: a clustered randomised controlled trial Ghent University
Although current psychotherapies for depression have been shown to be effective in reducing depressive symptoms, a significant proportion of adolescent patients (30-40%) relapse after initial recovery. This highlights the absolute need for new intervention programs that target basic mechanisms underlying the development of depressive episodes. The studies included my PhD and other recent evidence reliably demonstrate that both cognitive ...
Towards a taxonomy of (in)susceptible media users: The different roles of adolescent peer communication in media effects. KU Leuven
Average effects sizes in studies on the influence of media in large, heterogeneous samples are rather small, suggesting some individuals may be more susceptible to media effects than others. Yet, scholars have difficulty identifying well-defined groups of individuals who are consistently more susceptible to media effects. This raises the question whether traditional moderation analyses, focusing on a priori-derived risk factors, are ...
What drives depression contagion in adolescent best friends? An examination of the role of interpersonal response styles in an online and offline context KU Leuven
Depressive symptoms increase dramatically in the transition from childhood to adolescence. At the same time, friends become increasingly important conversation partners in adolescence. Notably, considerable evidence now suggests that adolescents and their friends can influence each other’s depression levels over time, a process called ‘depression contagion’. The current project aims to advance knowledge on the process of depression contagion ...
Social isolation in adolescent AD mice: effects on behaviour and functional connectivity KU Leuven
Adolescent transgenic mice with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) will be separated into two groups at random: standard housing and social isolation (SI). In addition, wild-type mice will also be randomly separated into a standard housing and isolation group. Each of the four groups will be tested as outlined below. We expect that SI to exacerbate AD-like symptoms in transgenic mice (see e.g. Huang et al., 2015; Hui, Feng, Zheng, Jin, and Jia, 2017). ...
A transdisciplinary study of the ethical implications of adolescent enrollment in a clinical trial in The Gambia Institute of Tropical Medicine
Well-being and recidivism in adolescent delinquents with psychiatric disorders: Does living a good life result in a reduction of recidivism rates? KU Leuven
Research in young delinquents, who exhibit persistent antisocial behaviour, has consistently revealed relatively high prevalence rates of psychiatric disorders (between 50% and 90%). Research and rehabilitation efforts have focused mainly on this population's criminogenic risk factors that are directly related to re-offending/recidivism, while other more general (non-criminogenic) needs (e.g., school or living situation) to increase ...