Carolina de Weerth was invited to give an online colloquium on 29th October to faculty and students at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (USA). The talk was called ‘Early life: stress, gut bacteria, and mother milk’. The public was interested and asked excellent questions! After the talk, she spent some time talking to the…

In the Spring of 2020 we started planning the NinO studie, with the aim of studying the role of contact and proximity during infants’ first months in Dutch daycare centres. We discussed our protocol extensively with different daycare providers and professionals, created materials for parents and teachers, obtained ethical approval, and carried out pilot tests….

Twice as many pregnant women experienced clinical levels of anxiety and depression during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the Netherlands compared to earlier years. The women experienced many worries about the new and unknown virus, diminished social contacts and loss of work and income. Support systems, especially healthcare support is one of the most important…

On the 5th of October, Dr. Stefania Vacaru was invited to give a lecture in Amsterdam about early child social relations. The conference’s theme was Intimacy throughout the lifespan, and Stefania started with the first talk of the day to explain how children form relations in the first years of life starting from attachment relationships…

Research focusThe Developmental Psychobiology Lab, led by Prof. Dr. Carolina de Weerth, investigates how early life – specifically pregnancy and the early postnatal years – influences development throughout the lifespan. Research in the DPB lab focuses on: the influences of prenatal maternal mental wellbeing on children’s health and behavioral development, the development of the physiological…

From 12 July – 16 July, members of the DPB lab successfully led the 4th edition of the Radboud Summer School course entitled: “Early programming: How early life shapes human development”. In its first online year, we were pleased to have 30 students from 18 countries join us for a series of interactive presentations, group activities, and stimulating discussions. Carolina…

Meet Hellen Lustermans, a PhD-student in our lab group. She is involved in the SMILEY-study and showed her work on the Radboudumc Instagram stories. Follow her on a day in the lab!

Last year Roseriet Beijers won the KNAW Early Career Partnership. With this partnership we organized the Lactational Programming Meeting in November 2020. Roseriet has been interviewed by the KNAW to talk about this hybrid meeting and the meaning of this KNAW Early Career Partnership for her. Interested in reading the interview? Click here!

It has been a topic of conversation for quite some time. According to the report of the Social and Economic Council (SER), childcare (at least twice a week) should be affordable for all incomes. For many parents it is far too expensive now, while it can play an important role in the development of young…

On June 10, 2021 our colleague Stefania Vacaru graduated! She did her PhD at the Donders Centre for Cognition in the BabyBRAIN group and defended her PhD thesis at the Radboud University in Nijmegen: To Affiliate or Not To Affiliate: Investigating Facial Mimicry in Early Development From very early on, children express affiliation behaviors towards…