GUTS: Growing Up Together in SocietyThe Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS) consortium, funded by a Gravitation grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, includes the collaboration of seven Dutch universities that together investigate how young people successfully navigate and grow up in our complex society.
The goal of this project is to understand how young people grow up in increasingly complex societies and make contributions to society: we will study individual neurobiological development in relation to educational processes, social networks, and societal norms, including antisocial behavior. We will study individual neurobiological development in relation to educational processes, social networks, and societal norms, including antisocial behavior. We will use state-of-the-art designs and methodological advances to develop an integrative framework on self-regulation development and contributions to society that will have explanatory as well as predictive power across multiple domains of functioning in adolescence and early adulthood.
The proposal can be downloaded
here.
About your roleAs a PhD you are part of a sub-team of the GUTS project that operates in Amsterdam, which has the unique aim to include 400 young participants (ages 10-12-years) that are at high risk of developing severe behavioral problems.
During your PhD, you will mainly focus on three themes: 1 structural brain development, 2 correlation between brain functioning in the lab and self-regulation in everyday-life, 3 exploring how low trust in institutions, common among youth displaying antisocial behavior, relates to self-regulation when participating in neuroimaging experiments. You will study these in a cohort of children (10-12 years) that are at high risk of developing antisocial and delinquent behavior.
- Setting up and recruit the high risk antisocial cohort of 400 children in the age range between 10-12, together with the PIs, a postdoc and two other PhDs;
- Collect and analyze (f)MRI and ESM data;
- Access and analyse previously acquired large cohorts data to develop brain signature to be used to predict anti-social behavior in the newly acquired cohort;
- Closely collaborate and coordinate with other member of the GUTS consortium at different seniority levels;
- Publish your findings in open access scientific journals;
- Actively participate in the communication with young people about their perspective on the study an relevant assessments, as well as the clinical and societal impact of your research findings.