André Marquand receives ERC consolidator grant

André Marquand is conducting research into the use of biomarkers — specific substances that can relay information about a person’s medical state. They have brought about a revolution in diagnosis and personalised treatment in many areas of medicine. Psychiatry is clearly behind in that regard. Mental disorders are still mostly diagnosed on the basis of symptoms simply because useful biomarkers are not available. This is because the means to analyse mental disorders at all imaginable levels — from neurobiology to behaviour — are still lacking.

Towards precision medicine in psychiatry

Marquand: “I want to develop a new toolbox that can be used to predict the start and the outcome of mental disorders on the basis of biomarkers. Biomarkers that signal the variation in the structure and organisation of the brain, based on the brain scans of over 40,000 people. I have developed a ‘brain chart technology’ which can function as a platform for both the shared and distinct characteristics of the mental disorder for individual people. A platform and a model that not only simulates different clinical brain states, but which can also test and model potential interventions.”

The innovative approach of Marquand, who is associated with the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, could have far-reaching consequences. He uses depression and bipolar disorders to illustrate the approach he envisions. “For these disorders, we want to examine whether we can predict the development towards resilience or risk. It will bring the application of precision medicine within the reach of psychiatry. It will not only provide us with a better understanding of mental disorders, but it will also make early, personalised interventions and preventive treatments possible.”

In this ERC-funded project, we aim to use neuroimaging data from the Healthy Brain Study to measure various aspects of brain structure and function at the level of the individual. In addition, we plan to acquire smartphone-based digital phenotyping data to measure moment-to-moment behavioural activity. The goal of the project is to develop analytical tools to integrate these complementary sources of information and to predict functioning at the level of the individual.

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Research Grants and Healthy Brain data

Team science subsidies awarded

Read how these great team set-ups their new interdisciplinary collaboration on Radboud campus. read more

Peter de Looff receives ZonMW research fellowship

12 December 2022

In this project he will improve forensic psychiatric treatments by combining traditional psychosocial treatment interventions with physiological measurements (heart rate, movement and temperature) using wearables.

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Radboud-Western-collaboration

17 October 2022

Radboud researchers Bernd Figner and Anna Tyborowska are starting a new research project with Canadian researchers. They use data from the Healthy Brain Study for this. Wondering what the goal of this project is? Read more here.

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Janna Vrijsen receives NWO Vidi grant

16 November 2023

Work-It-Out: Strengthening depression treatment through physical exercise. Janna Vrijsen, researcher at Radboudumc, receives NWO Vidi grant to investigate physical exercise to strengthen depression treatment.

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Eliana Vassena receives NWO SSH Open Competition XS grant

16 November 2023

Towards personalized prevention of stress-related disorders with computational phenotyping.

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André Marquand receives ERC consolidator grant

In this ERC-funded project, we aim to use neuroimaging data from the Healthy Brain Study to measure various aspects of brain structure and function at the level of the individual.

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Erno Hermans receives NWO Vici grant

21 March 2022

Hermans uses a dataset from the Healthy Brain Study. Hermans: ‘In this study we follow a thousand people for a year. We measure how people react physiologically to stressors in everyday life with wearables, such as smartwatches. What do they experience and how does that change their mental...

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Roshan Cools receives ERC advanced grant

3 May 2022

"In my ERC project, we will study how the brain computes when effortful control is required and when it is not, and how we decide when to prioritize which behavioral strategy. In this context we will focus on behavioural control in the context of stressors".

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