2 PhD positions in brain development & addiction

Adolescence marks rapid surges in alcohol and cannabis addiction, but also remarkable recovery rates, as most adolescent addictions naturally resolve over time. Brain development holds an import key to understanding the brain’s recovery potential. Within a multidisciplinairy ERC-funded project that aims to unravel addiction risk and resilience in adolescents and adults, two PhD candidates will jointly conduct a longitudinal neuroimaging study in adolescent and adult alcohol and cannabis users. The PhD candidates will work in close collaboration with each other under supervision of Janna Cousijn, and also collaborate with other project members who will conduct parallel rodent studies. The PhD candidates will be responsible for protocol development, participant recruitment, and data collection, management and analysis. Measures of brain activity, connectivity and structure will eventually be combined with behavioral data to test the predictive value of social and cognitive processes for changes in cannabis and alcohol abuse over time. As such, the PhD candidate will learn to handle different modalities of neuroimaging data. Besides research related activity, the PhD candidate will also be involved in the supervision of student research projects. We aim to start the project in September 2021.