Interview with Chantal Kemner
Interview with Chantal Kemner
"Environmental influences have an enormous impact on the brain."
The grant unites leading scientists from 7 universities, with backgrounds in e.g. pedagogical sciences, statistics, communication sciences, psychiatry, neurobiology and, of course developmental psychology. “We need all those different disciplines to solve the puzzle. It’s exciting to bring experts from so many disciplines together to understand why some children thrive and others don’t.”
Why do some children thrive in modern society while others drop out? That is the question that fascinates biopsychologist Chantal Kemner. “Environment can make all the difference,” she thinks. “Most children do very well, even under adverse conditions. What exactly determines their success in our society? This is the question we want to answer,” says Chantal Kemner, coordinator of a recently awarded NWO Gravitation grant on individual development.
How to intervene uitklapper, klik om te openen
Kemner is the ideal coordinator of this large program, combining appointments at the UMC Utrecht and the Faculty of Social Sciences. “Utrecht plays an important role in this grant. With the money, we can start a large youth cohort that we can follow up for at least 10 years. It does not only perfectly fit with the research subjects of the UMC Utrecht Brain Center , it also forms the core of the Utrecht University priority field Youth & Identity. We are the link between research groups in Social Sciences, Humanities and Clinical & Experimental Neurosciences.”
“Family, peers, social media, drugs… All these environmental influences have an enormous impact on how the brain and its connections develop, which in turn affects the child’s behavior. In our study, we’ll focus on two specific aspects of behavior that are enormously important for success in modern society: behavioral control and social competence. In the consortium we’ll look, under very controlled conditions, how to intervene with these developmental processes, in humans but also in animal models. And how one generation impacts on the next.”