short bio marte

Hello
My name is Marte, I am 21 years old and I am from the Netherlands. Currently I am in the Cognitive Science track. I am born and raised in Alphen a/d Rijn where I specialized in ‘beta’ subjects during my High School education. Although I really liked biology and chemistry I started with a Bachelor in Dutch language and culture, because I was really into Dutch literature as well. During my bachelors I moved to Amsterdam, which was one of the best decisions I made in my life. After taking courses in (Dutch) linguistics I figured out that I was more into linguistics than into literature. I did a minor in Practical Philosophy and took electives in (Psycho)Linguistics. After that I wrote my Bachelor thesis on verb agreement with disjunctively conjoined subjects in Dutch. During this period I rediscovered my interest in Biology and Chemistry (especially in the brain) as well, so I decided to apply for the Brain and Cognitive science master.
In this block I will follow the courses Brain, Development Plasticity and Repair and Hot Topics in Linguistics and Cognition.
My ultimate goal is to combine the study of the biology of the brain with (psycho)linguistics, because I think the gap between the study of language and the study of the brain is too big. In order to do this I am very interested in studying children with SLI and aphasia patients.

Best,
Marte

Sicco's Bio

What drives the choices of a young man cannot be stated in one blog. Furthermore it is hard to tell whether one blog can state the truth, but I might as well give it a try.

Born in a sleepy suburb invaginated by highways it seemed to me that I might as well move to the city. At first I was determined to study Philosophy, and the big question I wanted to answer was: what can we know? During a school project (on primate ethology) a friend of mine handed me a brochure about the Bachelor Psychobiology, she thought I might like it. Psychobiology was described as the science of the mind and behaviour and for some reason I immediately felt like I understood what that meant.

Of course! My initial question could be answered much easier if I would know how the think machine upstairs actually works!

Now, years later, I admire the high (naïve) expectancies I had. One does not grasp the biological basis of thought in a couple of years (not in centuries for that matter), but that doesn't make studying it less exciting. I had great fun during my Bachelor's and within three years it was all over again and (as is very usual in the Dutch educational system) once again I had to choose what I wanted to do next.

This proved to be much more of a challenge than I thought. Conveniently I put aside this difficult choice and decided to run for the student council of the university and the faculty and became a member of the council. Besides this I also chaired a committee (some of my classmates will remember) that organised a conference on Science and Religion. All of this put a great claim on my energy reserves (though I do have plenty) but I loved it.

Of course a year is through before you know it and before too long I again was confronted with the same choice I had to make a year before. The Master Brain and Cognitive Sciences attracted me in a way very similar to the Bachelor Psychobiology. A fresh and inspiring idea (and ideal) of integrating methods and theories in order to find new answers, and more importantly: new questions. Neuroscience was my track of choice, for obvious reasons.

Neuroscience Rules!

Hi, i'm alexander. I was born in Greece 26 years ago, lived in Canada for 10 years (don't remember much though) and then back in Greece until last August. I finished high school when i was 20 (took me some time ha?) and decided to study Psychology so i can answer all the mysteries in my head, you know, why i'm like i am, how can I manipulate people, thing like that. After 5 years in the University of Crete, yes i studied on an island, i can't say i got the answers i was looking for, actually i think i have even more questions then before! The truth is that Psychology was very interesting but methods pretty much sucked. During my studies i had an internship as a school psychologist, it was great but i couldn't imagine my future in a job where i had to get up at 7. After that i started my thesis titled "Childrens drawings as an indicator for emotional and cognitive disorders". After 8 very difficult months of research and a huge fight with my professor i started my second thesis (well, i never finished my first so i don't know if i can call it second) titled "Adult attachment and parental behavior: Relations and the role of individual differences". After dispensing, calculating and analysing 200 questionnairs and coming to no conclusions, i realised that psychological methods couldn't give me any robust results about behavior. Surveys and questionnaires weren't efficient for me so i decided to try something new, cognitive neuroscience. Just started so i can't say much, although it seems that methods in cognitive neuroscience have some disadvantages as well. As for my future plans, well, i have no idea, not even sure if i want to be a researcher! Anyway, other than that, i like Holland, though not knowing the language is a disadvantage. None the less, it's seems like a great place, very different to Greece in many ways, especially the weather. Well that all for now, tune in next week for more!

Veerle's Bio

Hi everyone!
My name is Veerle, 23 years old and imported from Woerden to Amsterdam 5 years ago. I'm in the Neuroscience track, and I'm actually somewhere between a first and second year master student.
After high school I chose to study psychobiology at the UvA because, like most psychobiologists, I don't like plants, but I do like biology! Furthermore, I liked it that this study was in a way broader than medical biology, because it involves psychology as well. However, during my bachelors I realized that I prefer biology over psychology. I kind of overreacted to this thought by starting a master Drug Innovation at Utrecht University (after a long fabulous trip to South-America of course :)), but soon after I started there, I began to miss the neurons and the UvA! I found out that I was already on the right place at the UvA, apperently the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Thanks to UvA's flexible administration, I was able to start in the middle of the year with the Neuroscience master. I did an internship at the Neurogenetics department at the Academical Medical Centre, which I really liked. During these 5 months, I was trying to find genetic mutations causing a neurodegenerative disease (pontocerebellar hypoplasia). Partly because of this internship I fell in love with science and research and I definately want to do a PhD after my masters.
At the moment I'm doing my second internship at the VU about how an unknown protein and ubiquitination are involved in learning and memory. Ooooh, magic!
Groetjes! Veerle

Ingeborg's Bio

Hi everyone!
I am Ingeborg and I'm in the cognitive science track. I have a background in cognitive & biological psychology. The reason way I decided to apply for this research master is twofold. First, I find it quite hard to chose between the many topics I find interesting, and therefore I really appreciate the broad nature of cognitive science. Second, I do know for sure that I want to do research and that I would like to teach.

During my bachelor, I did two (small) research projects. The first was in Berlin. I ran the control group of an experiment with Electrodermal activity (EDA). The subjects were exposed to emotionally valenced and neutral pictures while their skin conductance was measured. In Berlin I also collaborated on a study on sleep-deprivement, in which the participants were kept awake for 2 subsequent nights.
My bachelorthesis was on memory, more specifically on the testing effect. The participants had to learn the same stimuli in different ways, and were tested on their memory performance immediately and after a delay.
As a student assistent I thought statistics and several first year psychology courses, which I enjoyed doing.

At the moment I am involved in a research project with fMRI, in which the neuronal differences between bipolar and unipolar depressed patients is being studied.

In the future, I would like to do more research on memory & learning and factors that (I believe) might affect them; context, degree of attention and consciousness, personal relevance, etc.
In this master I also would like to learn several tools (programming, imaging techniques) to approach the same research questions from different angles. And since I am interested in many topics, I am curious for the interdisciplinary topics to be discussed :)

Leanne's

Bio Esther van Duin

Hi there!

My name is Esther van Duin, I’m from the Netherlands and in the NeuroScience track. I’m living in Amsterdam now for almost 4 years, but I’m raised in Amersfoort.
What human beings are and how we function has always interested me. Since high school, when I found out I had dyslexia, I wanted to know what was going on inside my own head (and what was going wrong, why I was reading slower than anybody else).
Furthermore, both my parents were working in a mental hospital, so I grew up hearing a lot about psychiatric patients and there syndromes.

After graduation I was really in doubt whether to go to the theatre / drama school (another passion) or not, but I was too scared to do the audition, so I decided to go to the University of Amsterdam to study psychobiology.
During my bachelor I was mainly interested in schizophrenia, drugs, stress, meditation, developmental disorders and I wrote my bachelor thesis (a research proposal) about “the neurobiology underlying dyslexia”
Besides my study activities I was also in the board of the study association of psychobiology, was student assistant for the education institute of psychobiology and head of the Amsterdam section of a homework assistance company.
Taken all of this together, it were three busy years, so after my graduation of the bachelor I decided to take a year off and went travelling through India, Nepal and South-East Asia. That was an amazing experience and made me think of my future plans.

Attending the master programme Brain and Cognitive Sciences was the outcome. I’m not finished with studying the brain and want to figure out if I would like to become a neuroscientist. I chose for the track NeuroScience because I was always interested in the causes of our behaviour. I’m not satisfied with a theoretical model, I want to know the exact genes that could be altered, the neurotransmitters that are involved and the brain areas that are activated. However I don’t want to stick to the small level of individual cells and want to make the leap to the higher levels of behaviour. That’s why I chose for an interdisciplinary master.

My vision for my future: doing interdisciplinary research on dyslexia, to figure out what is really going on inside my head……..