Name Neeltje van Haren
Department of Psychiatry
Section Brain changes in developmental disorders
Function assistent professor
E-mail:
n.e.m.vanharen@umcutrecht.nl Tel +31 88 75 57130
Title research line Neuroimaging in psychiatric disorders and healthy brain development
Summary research During the years 2002-2004 I have been working as a PhD-candidate and dataflow coordinator within the Neuroimaging section of the Department of Psychiatry, UMC Utrecht. During this time I analysed MRI scans from one of the largest longitudinal cohorts in schizophrenia research that I followed for a period of five years. In this cohort I established the trajectories of brain changes in healthy subjects between the ages of 18 and 56, and the differential brain changes in schizophrenia patients. Moreover, I linked these brain changes to outcome, medication use, and genetic markers. Furthermore, I have conducted a study calibrating MRI scanners over various sites in Europe, making it possible to combine datasets of twins from the UK, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands. Currently I am supervising the analysis of these data, which should come out within the next year. For this study I have worked for six months at the Institute of Psychiatry (London, UK) where I analyzed the MRI scans of their twin-cohort and I was involved in an ongoing fMRI study on verbal self-monitoring in hallucinating patients with schizophrenia. After finishing my PhD, in October 2004, I remained working at the Department of Psychiatry in Utrecht as assistant professor. I am currently setting up new studies, among others a 12-year follow-up of the cohort mentioned earlier, a 5-year follow-up of our bipolar twin-cohort, and a study to investigate the structure and function of brain areas that appear associated to the stress response. Furthermore, I am still analysing my 10-year follow-up data (e.g., genetic basis of brain volume change, hippocampal volume change, and cortical thickness).
Publications Rijsdijk FV, Haren NEM van, Picchioni M, McDonald C, Toulopoulou T, Hulshoff Pol HE, Kahn RS, Murray R, & Sham PC. (2005). Brain MRI abnormalities in schizophrenia: same genes or same environment? Psychological Medicine, 35, 1399-1409.
Hulshoff Pol HE, Schnack HG, Mandl RC, Brans RG, Haren NEM van, Baaré WF, van Oel CJ, Collins DL, Evans AC & Kahn RS. (2006). Gray and white matter density changes in monozygotic and same-sex dizygotic twins discordant for schizophrenia using voxel-based morphometry. Neuroimage. 31, 482-488.
Haren NEM van, Hulshoff Pol HE, Schnack HG, Cahn W, Mandl RCW, Collins LD, Evans AC, & Kahn RS. Focal gray and white matter changes in schizophrenia across the course of the illness: a 5-year follow-up study. Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 2057-2066.
Haren NEM van, Hulshoff Pol HE, Schnack HG, Cahn W, Brans R, Carati I, Rais M, & Kahn RS. (2008). Progressive brain volume decrease across the life-span in schizophrenia: a 5-year follow-up MRI study. Biological Psychiatry, 63, 106-113.
Haren NEM van, Bakker SC, & Kahn RS. (2008). Genes and structural brain imaging in schizophrenia. Current Opinions of Psychiatry, 21, 161-167.