Our lab members recently visited Irene and her new baby at home. They’re both doing great, and the baby was cute and sweet and simply perfect! Everybody enjoyed meeting her and seeing Irene again.

On the 17th of February 2025, Nicole Rheinheimer successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Development of regulation from infancy to adolescence–the role of early caregiving“. Nicole set up multiple studies within her PhD, including GO Baby and the BIBO 16-year wave, and published multiple great papers. Nicole did an excellent job during her PhD defense, answering…

On the 9th of January 2025, Henrik Eckermann successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Longitudinal Relations Between Early Life Stress, Gut Microbiota, and Executive Functioning from Pregnancy to Childhood“. Henrik started as a master intern at the DPB lab and for his PhD thesis worked with data from the BIBO, SKIPPY, and SMILEY cohorts.  We congratulate Henrik for…

Last month, from 9-11 July, the DPB-lab visited the conference of the International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS). It was hosted in Glasgow (Scotland), with around 850 scientists showcasing their work related to early development. The congress brought researchers together from around the globe with diverse perspectives and techniques to study infant development. Our own…

We recently published an article in Psychoneuroendocrinology on stress-related eating: does it affect pregnant women? Stress can lead to unhealthy food choices in 35-40% of the population, making the experience of stress an important target for interventions to improve overall health. But what about pregnant women? Does stress affect their food choices in a similar…

Our PhD candidate Nicole Rheinheimer participated in the conference ‘Psychologie und Gehirn’ (PuG) in Hamburg from May 29 to June 1. The PuG conference is organized annually by the German Psychological Society and the Society for Psychophysiology and its Applications. This year’s PuG offered a great variety of topics from neurobiology to clinical psychology as…

From 22 to 25 May, our PhD student Nicole attended the biannual conference of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN) in  Ghent. The conference started with a reception in the beautiful Opera hall of Ghent. There were many inspiring keynote talks, symposia and posters. During a symposium on Stress, Nicole presented results of…

In the week of 8 to 15 May the foundation Strong Babies is organizing “Kangaroo Care Awareness Week”, focusing on the impact of skin-to-skin contact. Our former PhD-student Kelly Cooijmans was invited to talk about our research on the podcast. You can listen to the podcast here.

Our recent SKIPPY study sheds light on the positive impact of skin-to-skin contact between mothers and full-term babies. We found that daily skin-to-skin contact for five weeks after birth led to significant benefits for both mothers and babies. For example:  Carolina de Weerth is keen to further investigate the effects found on the microbiome. She also advocates…

On the 15th of April 2024 Yvonne Willemsen successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled ‘Nutrition’s Route to Behaviour and Vice Versa: Longitudinal Links from Early Life to Adolescence’. Yvonne was part of Eat2BeNice, worked with data from the BINGO and BIBO cohorts, and published interesting studies. We proudly thank Yvonne for her hard work, completing…