Author Archives: anneurai

Anne Urai (1988), assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at Leiden University, receives theHeineken Young Scientists Award for Social Sciences 2026. In her laboratory, she investigates through controlled experiments how the brain processes information and how decisions are made. The jury is impressed by the originality and impact of her work and expects that she willContinue reading “Anne receives Heineken Young Scientists Award for Social Sciences”

Several lab members attended the Society for the Biology of Decision-Making meeting in Paris (https://sbdm2026.sciencesconf.org/). We kicked off with a satellite event, co-organised with the Palminteri lab, focusing on the intersection of cognitive science and sustainability: https://magdalenasabat.github.io/pre-sbdm. During the main meeting, Isabelle presented her DisRNN work, Robin his work on confidence fluctuations (preprint), and AnneContinue reading “SBDM in Paris”

For the 2026 course Psychology of the Climate Crisis, students worked on creative projects to communicate insights they learned to a broader public. Enjoy!

Anne visited a group of curious 4-6 year olds (pre-K, kleuterklas in Dutch) to talk brains! They knew the brain helps you think and feel (for instance when you’re hungry) and that it’s in the head. We learned that there are two big parts of the brain connected by a little bridge to talk withContinue reading “Curious kids learn about the brain”

We are happy to welcome Magdalena Sabat as a postdoc in the lab. She will investigate early warning signals of social tipping points, jointly supervised by Anne and Jan Willem Bolderdijk at the University of Amsterdam. We kicked off Magdalena’s start with several days of brainstorming with an amazing group of collaborators. Welcome!

We had a great time at the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience meeting in Amsterdam, with a satellite meeting on scientists for social good, posters, and a talk. It was great to meet old and new friends and collaborators!

For the first iteration of the new course Psychology of the Climate Crisis, students worked on creative projects to communicate insights they learned to a broader public. Find their creative contributions below!

With panelists Karline Janmaat, Christian Tudorache, Michelle Spierings and Anne Urai, and with Tonko Zijlstra as a moderator, we had an interesting and stimulating discussion about the ethics of animal research. With expertise from ethology to behavioral biology and neuroscience, the discussion touched on issues of research culture, institutional and legal frameworks for animal studies,Continue reading “Panel discussion: ethics of animal research”