The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant to Maartje de Jong for her research studying how the brain generates visual experiences.

Your eyes capture light like a camera, but to see you need your brain. How does your brain integrate visual with subjective information? Neural signals travelling in the opposite, ‘feedback’, direction through a hierarchy of brain regions may play a key role. Through her research, de Jong aims to determine how feedback signals contribute to visual experiences of objects. While human participants view images of real and illusory objects, de Jong will measure feedback signals using advanced neuroimaging techniques (7T fMRI and EcoG) and manipulate them with pharmacological intervention. This project will help solve the enigma around feedback signals, and thereby, will help us understand how brain regions work together. Read here more about the research study of de Jong.

Veni

Together with Vidi en Vici, Veni is part of NWO’s Talent Program. Veni is aimed at excellent researchers who have recently obtained their doctorate. The grant provides the laureates with the opportunity to further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years.