Investigating the effect of anticipating a startling acoustic stimulus on preparatory inhibition

Julien was a PhD student, having previously graduated in the field of motor sciences (2015). He first joined the CoActions lab in 2013 as a research student. During his master studies, he enhanced his research skills at KU Leuven working under the supervision of Pr. Swinnen thanks to an Erasmus grant. Julien was working on two main projects including (1) the development of a double-coil TMS method allowing to obtain motor-evoked potentials in both hands simultaneously and the investigation of preparatory inhibition in addiction.

Caroline completed a PhD in Psychological Sciences at the University of Liege as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at the department of Addiction Neuroscience of the University-Purdue Indianapolis University, where her research focused on the developmental and neurobiological bases of alcohol abuse and dependence. Caroline joined the CoActions lab in July 2014 and, since then, has been mainly investigating the contribution of deficient motor inhibitory mechanisms in addiction, and especially in alcohol-dependence.

Research broadly explores a range of questions pertaining to the cognitive neuroscience of human behavior. Conduct experiments to explore the interaction between cognition and action in neurologically healthy and impaired individuals. Use a variety of techniques to characterize the functional role of different parts of the motor pathways, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and electroencephalography (EEG). Recent research investigates the role of the locus coeruleus in various aspects of action control, including reaching movement control, decision making, and behavioral vigor, using transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) to causally probe this neuromodulatory system. More →