Projects
The social reproduction of preventive health behavior in Europe: societal transformations and fundamental social causes Ghent University
New preventive health measures widen the health gradient instead of reducing it. Previous theories too narrowly focused on proximate risk factors leading to insufficient explanations. The current proposal aims to contribute to an epidemiological sociology of health inequalities by developing a new framework consisting of the interconnection between fundamental cause theory, cultural health capital theory, and diffusion of innovation theory. ...
Toward improved translatability of animal research: Developing advanced social behavior tests in rats to assess microRNA depletion as a novel treatment target for the core social symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. KU Leuven
Rodents emit distinct types of ultrasonic vocalizations. These ultrasonic vocalizations have been shown to serve important socio-affective communicative functions in regulating social interactions. For instance, 50-kHz calls help to maintain social contact and promote play behavior and are associated with activity in brain reward centers, as shown in playback experiments (The Journal of Neuroscience, 2014). Their production can be provoked by ...
Social support in the Internet era: Relationships between stressors, problem behavior and adolescents' computer-mediated social support. KU Leuven
The exponential growth of social networking sites, especially the large amount of time spent on Facebook, raised concern about the potential harmful impact of social networking site use on adolescents’ well-being. However, over the years, controversy regarding the potential outcomes of adolescents’ social networking site use has emerged. This resulted in an ongoing scholarly debate on whether social networking sites, like Facebook, are ...
Learning About Pain From Others - Social learning of pain-related fear and avoidance behavior KU Leuven
Pain-related fear and avoiding activities that might be related to pain are two crucial factors in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. Pain-related fear and avoidance can be learned, so that formerly neutral movements can cause fear and avoidance, after they have been paired repeatedly with the experience of pain. However, learning via direct experience is but one way to learn about pain. Humans, as a social species, often learn ...
Social behavior and ultrasonic vocalizations in rodents KU Leuven
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is among the most heritable neuropsychiatric dysfunctions and increasing evidence indicates that abnormal development of cortical inhibitory circuits and the disruption of excitation and inhibition balance are central to disease pathogenesis. While available evidence points to a complex set of genetic factors, Reelin (RELN) has emerged as a key candidate gene. Yet the exact relationship of how genetic mutations ...
The role of oxytocin and the moderating effect of social context and personality on human affiliative behavior. University of Antwerp
eHealth Literacy, Health Information Seeking Behavior, Social Support and Vaccine Hesitancy: A Cross Sectional Study of COVID-19 Pandemic KU Leuven
Automated monitoring of pig behavior using multi-modal sensing and its application to study social interactions and stress Ghent University
This research proposal focuses on the automation of the observation of the (social) behavior of pigs at the farm and at the slaughterhouse using advanced video and sound processing, and the analysis of the data to gain insight in the dynamics of the behavior of pigs.