The 3rd European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN) meeting took place in Porto this year (23-26th of June). Sanne took part in a symposium organised by Henk van Steenbergen of the University of Leiden – together with Jan Glascher, Mara Mather, and Matthias Pessiglione, entitled: “how emotions drive attention and decision making”. Her talk focused on motivational influences on Pavlovian-instrumental transfer.

She also enjoyed Porto’s Festa da Sa Joao on the 23d of June during which people hit random strangers on the head with plastic hammers.

Link to ESCAN:
sites.google.com/site/escaneurosci/

New research demonstrating the role of habit learning in cocaine addicts is now published in Science. You can find the article on the Science website.

Reference:
Ersche, K.D., Gillan, C.M., Jones, P.M., Williams, G.B., Ward, L.H.E., Luijten, M., de Wit, S., Sahakian, B.J., Bullmore, E.T., Robbins, T.W. (2016). Carrots and sticks fail to change behavior in cocaine addiction. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf3700

This research also gained attention in the media:
– www.sciencenews.org
– www.eurekalert.org
– www.uva.nl

New research demonstrates that bias toward habits is associated with nonclinical Obsessive-Compulsive symptom dimensions. The article is published in Psychiatry Research.

Link: http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781(16)30690-4/pdf

Reference: Snorrason, I., Lee, H. J., de Wit, S., & Woods, D. W. (2016). Are Nonclinical Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Associated with Bias toward Habits? Psychiatry Research.

On April 21st, Poppy Watson successfully defended her thesis entitled ‘From Outcomes to Actions: Fundamental mechanisms in reward seeking’. The committee was impressed with the vast amount of high quality work reported in this thesis. Poppy conducted her PhD at the Dept. of Developmental Psychology at UvA, under supervision of Prof. Reinout Wiers, Prof. Bernhard Hommel, and Dr. Sanne de Wit. Poppy will continue her career as a postdoctoral researcher in the HabitLab. Congratulations dr. Poppy!

Dr Lee Hogarth (Exeter University, UK) will give the Rita Vuyk lecture titled “What dimension of drug conditioning is most closely associated with individual differences in level of drug dependence? Identifying the core learning process in addiction” on Wednesday 20th April at 4pm in room G -1.08. Dr Lee Hogarth is an experimental psychologist studying the learning mechanisms that underpin human addictive behavior. At the intersection of behavioral neuroscience and clinical psychology he has systematically and critically examined the role that attention to external drug cues plays in the control of drug-seeking behavior, the decision processes by which external drug cues control drug-seeking behavior and the role of habits in addiction. During his lecture he will discuss recent research focused on identifying the core learning process(es) that underlie human addictive behavior.

Click here to visit Dr Hogarth’s personal website.

At the end of March, Poppy Watson attended the Gregynog Associative Learning Conference in Wales. A small intimate conference, the highlights for her were talks from Andrew Nelson (Cardiff University) about whether goal-tracking and sign-tracking can be considered stable behavioral traits in animals, Mike le Pelley (UNSW) about maladaptive attentional capture by reward related stimuli and Ian McLaren’s lecture on the evidence for propositional vs associative mechanisms (or both) underlying human behavior.

Poppy Watson will defend her PhD thesis entitled ‘From Outcomes to Actions: fundamental mechanisms in reward seeking’ on Thursday 21st of April at 10am in the Agnietenkapel (LinkToDigitalDissertation). Poppy conducted her PhD at the Dept. of Developmental Psychology at UvA, under supervision of promotoren Prof. Reinout Wiers, Prof. Bernhard Hommel, and as co-promoter and daily supervisor Dr. Sanne de Wit. After her PhD, she has a postdoc position in the HabitLab.

Delorme, C., Salvador, A.,  Valabrègue, R., Roze, E., Palminteri, S., Vidailhet, M., de Wit, S., Robbins, T.W.,  Hartmann, A., & Worbe, Y. (2016). Enhanced habits formation in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. Brain, 605-615,doi: dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/awv307

Link: brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/139/2/605.long

For a scientific commentary by Harvey Singer, see:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/awv378 312-316

Aukje participated in this Synergy meeting that brought together international experts on the topic of implementation intentions (August 2014), and participated in the writing of a joint paper with recommendations for research and practice:

‘Implementation intention and planning interventions in health psychology: Recommendations from the Synergy expert group for research and practice’

Reference: Hagger, M. S., Luszczynska, A., de Wit, J., Benyamini, Y., Burkert, S., Chamberland, P.-E., Chater, A. M., Dombrowski, S., van Dongen, A., French, D. P., Gauchet, A., Hankonen, N., Karekla, M., Kinney, A. Y., Kwasnicka, D., Lo, S. H., López-Roíg, S., Meslot, C., Marques, M. M., Neter, E., M., Plass A., Potthoff, S., Rennie, L., Scholz, U., Stadler, G., Stolte, E., A., ten Hoor G., Verhoeven, A. A. C., Wagner, M., Oettingen, G., Sheeran, P. and Gollwitzer, P. M. (in press). Implementation intention and planning interventions in health psychology: Recommendations from the Synergy expert group for research and practice. Psychology & Health. doi:10.1080/08870446.2016.1146719

Link to article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08870446.2016.1146719#.VugkdfkrLrc

Link to meeting: http://www.ehps.net/content/implementation-intention-and-action-planning-interventions-health-psychology-evaluating

At the ARPH (Association for Researchers in Psychology and Health) congress in Maastricht during the 28th-29th of January 2016, Aukje gave a presentation on the preliminary findings of Healthyways coaching of eating habits. For this (still ongoing) project she recruited female volunteers (via fitness centers and our website) who aimed to improve their eating habits. Her presentation was entitled: “Planning to change unhealthy snacking and the role of mental associations”

Link to ARPH 2016: www.arphconference.nl

Watson, P. , Wiers, R.W., Hommel, B., Ridderinkhof, K.R. & de Wit, S. (2016). An associative account of how the obesogenic environment biases adolescents’ food choices. Appetite, 96, 560-571, doi: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.10.008

“How to master your habits and take control of your life” – written by Neal Burrell
Link: www.newscientist.com/article/mg22930560-600-take-control-of-your-life-by-mastering-the-force-of-habit/

The textbook ‘Motivation and Cognitive Control’ (edited by Todd Braver) has just been published. Researchers with different research traditions and perspectives on motivation and cognitive control have contributed chapters. Sanne de Wit & Anthony Dickinson wrote a chapter on ideomotor mechanisms of goal-directed behavior, in which they review relevant animal and human research into action control.

Link to publisher site: www.routledge.com/products/9781848726468

During the conference of the ‘Associatie van Sociaal-Psychologische Onderzoekers’ (Amsterdam, 10-11 Dec 2015), Aukje Verhoeven presented her recent research into the effect of implementation intentions on the ability to suppress learnt responses in a computer paradigm. The title of her presentation was: Breaking the chains of habit with implementation intentions: An experimental investigation.

Link to ASPO: www.sociale-psychologie.nl

On Monday 23/11, Paschal Sheeran, professor in Psychology (UNC, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA) visited the Habit Lab. With the presence of a large audience, he gave an inspiring talk entitled “From Health Beliefs to Behavior Change”‘.

In de Oplossers rubriek van Vrij Nederland wordt besproken hoe we ervoor kunnen zorgen dat kinderen gezonder gaan eten…

Link naar artikel: www.vn.nl/de-oplossers-kinderen-gezond-eten

At the beginning of this year, the Healthyways coaching program was launched at the large pharmaceutical company MSD. The Healthyways coaches train employees of MSD in transforming their unhealthy snacking habits into healthy ones. In this way, the participants are supported in changing their eating habits, and they are contributing to scientific research of the Habit Lab. In April, we are ready to start coaching the third cohort of motivated employees!

Would you like to learn more about the Healthyways coachings project? Please visit: www.healthyways.nl.

During 6th-10th of September, the HabitLab visited the first ‘Leipzig International Meeting for Interdisciplinary Obesity Research Leipzig’. Aukje Verhoeven, Poppy Watson and Sarah Knot gave poster presentations. Aukje presented a poster on part of her PhD research into: promoting healthy eating habits using implementation intentions as a meta-cognitive strategy. Poppy presented her research into Pavlovian-instrumental interactions and their potential role in food-seeking behaviour in obese individuals. Sarah presented the HealthyWays coaching research (for eating and exercise habits) that she participated in for her research master’s thesis. Finally, Sanne de Wit gave a talk about external stimulus control in an obesogenic environment.

Link to LIMIOR website: www.ifb-adipositas.de/en/research/limior

Sarah has just completed her Research Master in Brain & Cognition at the UvA, and this week she has started her PhD on the topic of strategic automaticity through implementation intentions. She will investigate whether these simple if-then plans can accelerate the formation of stimulus-response habits, as reflected both in increased efficiency but also reduced behavioral flexibility. To this end, she will develop experimental models for both behavioral and f/rMRI investigation. The practical relevance of this research concerns the improvement and individual tailoring of interventions aimed at changing maladaptive habits.

At the BAP Summer Meeting (July 2015), Naomi Fineberg and Dick Veltman chaired a symposium on ‘Advances in Compulsivity – A trans-diagnostic perspective’. Sanne de Wit spoke on models of compulsivity ‘from animal to human endophenotypes’.

This symposium addresses compulsivity from a trans-diagnostic (horizontal) perspective, drawing attention to the substantial societal cost of behaviours and disorders characterised by compulsivity, underpinning mechanisms and implications for treatment. We aim to raise awareness of the importance of recognizing and treating compulsivity within psychiatry and generate new research directions.

Link to meeting: www.bap.org.uk/summermeeting

During July 22-26, Sanne and Poppy attended the Advances in the Science Of Habits meeting on Catalina Island, that was organized by Wendy Wood, and supported by the University of Southern California and Templeton foundation. It was a truly inspiring meeting! And next to lots of interesting talks and discussions with experts on habit, swimming with leopard sharks was a bonus!

“In recent years, we are seeing remarkable advances in scientific understanding of the psychological and neural mechanisms behind habit learning and performance. These developments are evident in research in psychology, neuroscience, economics, consumer behavior, and health. Our conference provides an opportunity for researchers working within these different disciplines to present their work, exchange ideas, and potentially develop collaborations. The conference features basic research on the neuropsychological mechanisms behind habit formation and performance as well as research on the implications of habits for social behavior, marketing, and health.”

Link to conference: http://dornsife.usc.edu/conferences/advances-in-the-science-of-habits/advances-in-the-science-of-habits-2015/

On the 1st of June (2015) in the Brakke Grond, Freek and Hella de Jonge awarded the Creative Mind Prize to Aukje, for her research proposal entitled: Freed from fixation: Untangling the chains of learned associations. This prize was supplemented by an ABC Talent grant, which means that Aukje has one year’s worth of salary and research funding to carry out her research project, in which she translates principles from healthy psychology and habit to the domain of creativity. Congratulations Aukje!

In dit artikel in het interdisciplinaire tijdschrift Blind, bespreekt Sanne de Wit verschillende onderzoeksmethoden op het gebied van gewoontes: dagboek-onderzoek, experimentele methodes en neuroimaging. Ieder methode heeft zowel voor- als nadelen. Systematisch onderzoek waarin deze methodes worden gecombineerd, is dan ook cruciaal.

Link naar artikel: www.ziedaar.nl/article.php?id=478