The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant to Maartje de Jong, postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at University of Amsterdam and Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, for her research studying how the brain generates visual experiences.

Maartje de Jong: I spy with my little eye… How the brain generates visual experiences

Your eyes capture light like a camera, but to see you need your brain. How does your brain integrate visual with subjective information? Neural signals travelling in the opposite, ‘feedback’, direction through a hierarchy of brain regions may play a key role. Through her research, de Jong aims to determine how feedback signals contribute to visual experiences of objects. While human participants view images of real and illusory objects, de Jong will measure feedback signals using advanced neuroimaging techniques (7T fMRI and EcoG) and manipulate them with pharmacological intervention. This project will help solve the enigma around feedback signals, and thereby, will help us understand how brain regions work together.

Veni grant

Together with Vidi en Vici, Veni is part of NWO’s Talent Program. Veni is aimed at excellent researchers who have recently obtained their doctorate. The grant provides the laureates with the opportunity to further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years. These awards form the second and final section of the Veni round 2021 and address the Social Sciences and Humanities, and Applied and Engineering Sciences domains. The first section of the awards - for theExact and Natural Sciences domain- was announced by the NWO in December 2021. Philip Jansen was one of the laureates in December 2021.

Source: NWO