Roshan Cools | |
---|---|
Born | 10 June 1975 |
Alma mater | University of Groningen (MA) University of Cambridge (PhD) |
Awards | Royal Society University Research Fellowship |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Cognitive neuroscience [1] |
Institutions | University of Cambridge University of California, Berkeley Radboud University Nijmegen |
Thesis | Parkinson's disease as a model of dopamine-dependent fronto-striatal cognitive dysfunction (2003) |
Doctoral advisor | Trevor Robbins |
Website | roshancools |
Roshan Cools (born 10 June 1975) is a Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry at Radboud University Nijmegen. [1] She is interested in the motivational and cognitive control of human behaviour and how it is impacted by neuromodulation. She was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
Cools was born in the Netherlands. Her father was a brain scientist and she recalls conversations about the brain and dopamine at the dinner table. [2] Cools studied neuropsychology at the University of Groningen. She graduated cum laude in 1998 and moved to the United Kingdom. Cools worked with Trevor Robbins at the University of Cambridge on Parkinson's disease for her PhD awarded in 2002. [3]
After earning her doctoral degree she worked as a Junior Research fellow and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at St John's College, Cambridge. She moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where she spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow with Mark D'Esposito. [4] She won a Royal Society University Research Fellowship which was based at the University of Cambridge.
In 2007 Cools moved back to the Netherlands, where she worked in the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging in the Donders Institute for Brain. At the Radboud University Nijmegen Cools leads the Motivational and Cognitive Control Lab. [5] She was promoted to Full Professor in 2011. She studies the role of neuromodulators (dopamine and serotonin) in the control of decision making. [6] [7] She showed that the genes associated with dopamine impact how we learn from the long-term consequences of decisions, whilst serotonin is more strongly associated with short-term choices. [8] She has also shown that people who gamble have increased levels of dopamine in their brains, whilst people who are addicted to drugs have average or lower than normal levels of dopamine. [9]
She used her expertise in decision making to show that dominant individuals are avid social learners; whilst they value their independence, they rely on social learning in complex decision making tasks. [10] She is interested in advancing understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders, including impulse control disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson's disease. [6] She demonstrated that people suffering from schizophrenia have motivation deficits from very early stages of their diagnoses, which are unrelated to their treatments. [11]
Cools is interested in the mechanisms by which we exert willpower and what happens to willpower in people with ADHD. [12] [13] She believes that the goals that are characteristic of human behaviour can be classified as motivational (i.e. maximise reward) and cognitive (i.e. complete task). Her research considers the interactions between motivational and cognitive control. [13] Cools demonstrated that the neural networks of psychopathic criminals are different to that or normal people, with a strong focus on reward and a lack of self-control. [14]
She was appointed to the Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy to the Dutch government in 2014. [15]
Her awards and honours include;
She delivered a TED Talk at Radboud University Nijmegen in 2013. [21]
Her publications include;
Dopamine is a neuromodulatory molecule that plays several important roles in cells. It is an organic chemical of the catecholamine and phenethylamine families. Dopamine constitutes about 80% of the catecholamine content in the brain. It is an amine synthesized by removing a carboxyl group from a molecule of its precursor chemical, L-DOPA, which is synthesized in the brain and kidneys. Dopamine is also synthesized in plants and most animals. In the brain, dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter—a chemical released by neurons to send signals to other nerve cells. Neurotransmitters are synthesized in specific regions of the brain, but affect many regions systemically. The brain includes several distinct dopamine pathways, one of which plays a major role in the motivational component of reward-motivated behavior. The anticipation of most types of rewards increases the level of dopamine in the brain, and many addictive drugs increase dopamine release or block its reuptake into neurons following release. Other brain dopamine pathways are involved in motor control and in controlling the release of various hormones. These pathways and cell groups form a dopamine system which is neuromodulatory.
Dopaminergic pathways in the human brain are involved in both physiological and behavioral processes including movement, cognition, executive functions, reward, motivation, and neuroendocrine control. Each pathway is a set of projection neurons, consisting of individual dopaminergic neurons.
Dopamine receptors are a class of G protein-coupled receptors that are prominent in the vertebrate central nervous system (CNS). Dopamine receptors activate different effectors through not only G-protein coupling, but also signaling through different protein interactions. The neurotransmitter dopamine is the primary endogenous ligand for dopamine receptors.
Hypokinesia is one of the classifications of movement disorders, and refers to decreased bodily movement. Hypokinesia is characterized by a partial or complete loss of muscle movement due to a disruption in the basal ganglia. Hypokinesia is a symptom of Parkinson's disease shown as muscle rigidity and an inability to produce movement. It is also associated with mental health disorders and prolonged inactivity due to illness, amongst other diseases.
The Radboud University Medical Center, is the teaching hospital affiliated with the Radboud University, in the city of Nijmegen in the eastern-central part of the Netherlands.
The Donders Centre for Cognition is a research institute for cognitive science, neuroscience and information technology. It was founded in 1986 as an integral part of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands.
Patricia Goldman-Rakic was an American professor of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and psychology at Yale University School of Medicine. She pioneered multidisciplinary research of the prefrontal cortex and working memory.
Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.
Monique Maria Bernadette Breteler is a Dutch neuroepidemiologist. She is Director of Population Health Sciences at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Bonn. Between 2002 and 2022, she was Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2015, and a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2019.
Harold Bekkering is a Dutch professor of cognitive psychology at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour of the Radboud University Nijmegen. His research has covered many different ways of learning, ranging from basic sensorimotor learning to complex forms of social learning. Lately, he aims to implement knowledge about human learning in educational settings.
Eveline Crone is a Dutch professor of cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on risky behaviors in adolescent humans during puberty and examines the function of those risks. For her research in adolescent brain development and behaviour, she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest recognition for Dutch scientists, in 2017.
Antje Susanne Meyer is a German-Dutch experimental psychologist, known for her work in language production. She is currently one of the scientific directors of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and also a professor of individual differences in language processing at Radboud University.
Mihai G. Netea is a Romanian Dutch physician and professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, specialized in infectious disease, immunology, and global health.
Asifa Majid is a psychologist, linguist and cognitive scientist who is professor of language, communication and cultural cognition at the University of Oxford, UK. She is the 2024 recipient of the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building, awarded by the Cognitive Science Society. In 2015 she won the Ammodo KNAW Award for fundamental research. In 2024 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Anders Björklund is a Swedish neuroscientist and pioneer in the study of cell- and gene-based reparative and neuroprotective mechanisms in the brain. He has spent his academic career at Lund University in Sweden, as professor since 1983 and as senior professor at the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center since his formal retirement in 2012.
Aslı Özyürek is a linguist, cognitive scientist and psychologist. She is professor at the Center for Language Sciences and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen, and incoming Director of the Multimodal Language Department of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Marc Lewis is a Canadian clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, academic, and author from Toronto, Ontario.
Masud Husain FMedSci is a clinical neurologist and neuroscientist working in the UK. He is Professor of Neurology & Cognitive Neuroscience at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Departmental of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, a Professorial Fellow at New College, Oxford, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Brain. He was born in East Pakistan.
Peter Hagoort is a Dutch neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of language.
Floris de Lange is a cognitive neuroscientist known for his contributions in the fields of perception research, and predictive coding using laminar fMRI, magnetoencephalography, computational modeling, and AI models for neuroscience. Currently, de Lange holds the position of Principal Investigator at the Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, where he established the Predictive Brain Lab. Additionally, he serves as a senior editor at eLife and he is professor of Perception and Cognition at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Radboud University Nijmegen.