The focus area Safety within the program Brain & Cognition - social innovation in health care, education and safety aims at two important areas of social safety: 1) reduction of severe antisocial and violent behavior and 2) support of professionals who are charged with safeguarding society and have an increased profession-related risk of being exposed to (traumatically) stressful events. The research projects within the focus area Safety aim at bridging the gap between neuroscientific knowledge that is being developed at universities, and the need of such knowledge in professional practice (for instance judicial practice, penitentiaries, police, youth institutions, and more). A crucial aspect is that the research projects make steps forward towards (future) use of knowledge in practice. The focus area Safety includes the following research themes: 1) Effectiveness of interventions for severe antisocial behavior. Although several effective interventions exist, there is always a substantial group for whom these interventions do not work. Professionals in the field need more insight in What works for whom. Therefore the research programs Antisocial behavior; measuring and supervision and Improving control of aggression will investigate the additive value of neurobiological and neuropsychological assessments for prediction of treatment success in three cognitive behavioral treatment intervention programs, and a pharmacological intervention. The behavioral interventions are: Aggression Replacement Therapy (ART) for adult and adolescent forensic psychiatric patients, Parent Management Training Oregon (PMTO) for parents of children with problematically aggressive behaviour, and Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) for detainees. 2) New insights in underlying mechanisms of antisocial behavior. Two innovative research programs within the focus area of Social Safety intend to provide new insights in the underlying mechanisms of different forms of severe antisocial and aggressive behavior. The aim is to provide new leads for succesful prevention and interventions. The research program Improving control of aggression investigates innovative physiological and biochemical treatment methods for adults with severe aggressive behavior. The innovative program A good start - early prevention of antisocial behavior investigates which factors are promotive or protective of development of antisocial and aggressive behavior in young children of high risk families. 3) Support for professionals who need to make decisions under high pressure and for professionals with high traumatic stress exposure. The quick result project Better decisions under high pressure aims at developing methods to reduce negative effects of strong emotions on decisions made under high pressure by for instance local administrators. The innovative program Resilience and vulnerability following stress aims at new insights in factors that promote resilience or vulnerability to stress, and will develop interventions to promote resilience and prevent stress-related pathology in professionals such as police, soldiers, firefighters, and ambulance personnel.

During this matchmaking event, we will bring scientists from universities, higher education and knowledge institutes together with societal stakeholders to form new and improved collaborations.The focus will be on finding practical implementations for brain science in youth education and safety. Societal stakeholders and scientists will be involved in an interactive workshop to help them set up sustainable collaborations.

Juvenile delinquency is a significant problem in our society. In forensic practice, we focus on treatment of juvenile delinquents, in order to reduce the risk of recidivism. Unfortunately, interventions are not yet effective for all forenisc youth. We believe this can be improved by taking into account the neurobiological development of youth. Therefore, in this project we will investigate how the individual neurobiological development of juvenile delinquentsis related to their psychosocial development and the effectiveness of treatment. With this knowledge, we can apply existing forensic interventions and adolescent criminal law more effectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severe consequences for our society with a particular impact on areas related to brain, cognition and behaviour. NeuroLabNL focuses on these research areas as well as the translation from science to society. Many projects on the societal consequences of COVID-19 and related measures have been initiated. However, to achieve a good translation from science into policy, expert reviews are needed. NeuroLabNL uniquely combines expertise from science and societal partners, and is therefore able to extract and translate the information into recommendations that can help The Netherlands deal with the consequences of COVID-19. Based on brainstorm sessions with the NeurolabNL taskforce and feedback of the NeurolabNL community, we propose to create an inventory of three Cochrane reviews concentrating on the domains of Health (e.g., does a healthy lifestyle protect against unfavourable disease trajectories), Education (e.g., how can we keep students motivated), and Social Safety (e.g., the effects of COVID-19 on specific patterns of criminal behaviour), taking a bio-psycho-social perspective (e.g. moderating effects of e.g. gender, age socio economic status) into account. We will connect the expertise of scientific and societal partners via expert-meetings and an advisory committee and deliver a synthesis of concrete recommendations in a roadmap.

Onze hersenen vervullen een belangrijke en bijzondere rol. Ze vormen de oorsprong van onze gedachten, gevoelens en ervaringen. In het onderzoek dat gedaan wordt op basis van de NWA-Startimpuls van NeurolabNL worden vragen over hersenontwikkeling en gedrag beantwoord, zoals; “hoe heeft hersenontwikkeling invloed op (anti)sociaal gedrag en motivatie bij jongeren?”. De kennis uit dit onderzoek wordt onder andere ingezet in het onderwijs om leer-motivatie te verhogen en de sociale sfeer en veiligheid in de klas te bevorderen. Jongeren zelf hebben echter nauwelijks toegang tot deze kennis. De stap die nu genomen kan worden is het teruggeven van kennis over hersenontwikkeling aan jongeren zelf. Dit heeft als doel de waardering en het begrip van neurowetenschap te vergroten, zodat jongeren informatie over hersenontwikkeling mee kunnen laten wegen in belangrijke keuzes tijdens hun eigen ontwikkeling. De Jongeren Raad van Advies van NeurolabNL heeft recent voorgesteld om jongerenambassadeurs de resultaten van het onderzoek via social media te laten communiceren. In dit project zullen jongeren van diverse opleidingen communicatieproducten ontwerpen over onderzoeksresultaten die voor hen relevant zijn. Op deze manier bereiken we een brede groep jongeren met neurowetenschappelijke kennis waar ze iets aan hebben in hun dagelijkse leven.