Henk van Steenbergen

Leiden University | LEI · Institute of Psychology

The ability to adjust attentional focus to varying levels of task demands depends on the adaptive recruitment of cognitive control processes. The present study investigated for the first time whether the mobilization of cognitive control during response-conflict trials in a flanker task is associated with effort-related sympathetic activity as meas...

The ability to adaptively increase cognitive control in response to cognitive challenges is crucial for goal-directed behavior. Recent findings suggest that aversive arousal triggers adaptive increases of control, but the neurochemical mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. Given the known contributions of the opioid system to hedonic...

Posterror slowing (PES) is the observation that people respond slower on trials subsequent to error commissions than on trials subsequent to correct responses. Different accounts have been proposed to explain PES. On the one hand, it has been suggested that PES arises from an adaptive increase in cognitive control following error commission, thereb...

Besides physiological, behavioural, and affective effects, romantic love also has cognitive effects. In this study, we tested (1) whether individual differences in infatuation and/or attachment level predict impaired interference control even in the absence of a love booster procedure, and (2) whether individual differences in attachment level pred...

Positive affect can help to dampen the impact of adverse life events, facilitating healthy cognitive and emotional functioning after stress. The present review highlights recent findings on the stress buffering effects of these pleasant feeling states, focusing on studies utilizing acute and chronic stress in daily life, stress manipulations in the...

The U-shaped curve has long been recognized as a fundamental concept in psychological science, particularly in theories about motivational accounts and cognitive control. In this study (N = 330), we empirically tested the prediction of a nonmonotonic, curvilinear relationship between task difficulty and control adaptation. Drawing from motivational...

People regularly encounter various types of conflict. Here, we ask if, and, if so, how, different types of conflict, from lab-based Stroop conflicts to everyday-life self-control or moral conflicts, are related to one other. We present a framework that assumes that action–goal representations are hierarchically organized, ranging from concrete acti...

Performance-contingent rewards can enhance cognitive effort and improve performance. However, it is unclear which reward components drive these effects, and how they impact performance when rewards are unavailable. In two studies we directly contrast the effects of two performance-contingent reward components: reward prospect (opportunity to earn a...

Hedonic overconsumption (e.g., overconsumption of gratifying behaviors, e.g., eating, gaming) is common in daily life and often problematic, pointing to the need for adequate behavioral models. In this article, we develop a self-regulatory framework proposing that when an actual consumption experience falls short of hedonic expectations—such as whe...

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has been associated with alterations in amygdala and hippocampal volume but there is mixed evidence for the direction of volumetric alterations. Additionally, little is known about the involvement distinct subfields of these regions in the pathophysiology of SAD. Methods: T1-weighted MRI images from a large...

When individuals eat while distracted, they may compensate by consuming more afterwards. Here, we examined the effect of eating while driving, and explored potential underlying mechanisms. Participants (N = 116, 73.3% female) were randomly allocated to complete a driving simulation (distraction condition) or to watch someone else drive (control con...

Facial mimicry as well as the accurate assessment of one's performance when judging others’ emotional expressions have been suggested to inform successful emotion recognition. Differences in the integration of these two information sources might explain alterations in the perception of others’ emotions in individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder an...

The U-shaped curve has long been recognized as a fundamental concept in psychological science, particularly in theories about motivational accounts and cognitive control. In this study (N=330), we empirically tested the prediction of a non-monotonic, curvilinear relationship between task difficulty and control adaptation. Drawing from Motivational...

Distracted eating can cause overconsumption. Whereas previous work has shown that cognitive load suppresses perceived taste intensity and increases subsequent consumption, the mechanism behind distraction-induced overconsumption remains unclear. To elucidate this, we performed two event-related fMRI experiments that examined how cognitive load affe...

Many of our decisions take place under uncertainty. To successfully navigate the environment, individuals need to estimate the degree of uncertainty and adapt their behaviors accordingly by learning from experiences. However, uncertainty is a broad construct and distinct types of uncertainty may differentially influence our learning. We provide a s...

Cognitive control is a set of mechanisms that help us process conflicting stimuli and maintain goal-relevant behaviour. According to the Affective Signalling Hypothesis, conflicting stimuli are aversive and thus elicit (negative) affect, moreover - to avoid aversive signals - affective and cognitive systems work together by increasing control and t...

When individuals eat while distracted, they may compensate by consuming more afterwards. Here, we examined the effect of eating while driving, and explored potential underlying mechanisms. Participants (N = 116, 73.3% female) were randomly allocated to complete a driving simulation (distraction condition) or to watch someone else drive (control con...

Distracted eating can cause overconsumption. Whereas previous work has shown that cognitive load leads to lower subjective taste intensity and increased subsequent consumption, the mechanism behind distraction-induced overconsumption remains unclear. To elucidate this, we performed two event-related fMRI experiments that examined how cognitive load...

While animal studies have demonstrated a unique reproduction-related neuroplasticity, little is known on the effects of pregnancy on the human brain. Here we investigated whether pregnancy is associated with changes to resting state brain activity, white matter microstructure, neural metabolite concentrations and grey matter architecture using a co...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

E-Prime is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide. It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of entert...

Hedonic overconsumption (e.g., overconsumption of gratifying behaviors, e.g., eating, gaming, etc.) is common in daily life and often problematic, pointing to the need for adequate behavioral models. It has been theorized that when a consumption experience falls short of hedonic expectations people will generally consume more to compensate the shor...

Affective effects on breadth of attention have been related to aspects of different components of affective states such as the arousal and valence of affective experience and the motivational intensity of action tendency. As none of these explanations fully aligns with existing evidence, we hypothesised that affective effects on breadth of attentio...

Affective states are expressed in an individual’s physical appearance, ranging from facial expressions and body postures, to indicators of physiological arousal (e.g., a blush). Confirming the claimed communicative function of these markers, humans are capable of distinguishing between a variety of discrete emotion displays. In an attempt to explai...

Both individuals with social anxiety disorder and individuals with autism spectrum disorder show alterations in the perception of others’ emotional facial expressions. Additionally, mimicry of an observed expression as well as the assessment of one’s own performance, i.e. metacognition, may be altered in these individuals. Using a non-clinical samp...

Background Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a serious psychiatric condition with a high prevalence, and a typical onset during childhood/adolescence. The condition runs in families, but it is largely unknown which neurobiological characteristics transfer this genetic vulnerability (‘endophenotypes’). Using data from the Leiden Family Lab study on S...

Positive affect has been linked to increased flexibility in disparate domains, however, conclusions across these domains are still missing. In this review, we focus on flexibility studied in the context of cognitive control and attention, where striking similarities are observed. Positive affect increases flexibility and broadens attention at the c...

Positive emotions are an important part of human life. They can be very strong, for example when we fall in love, land our dream job, or attend a concert or sports event. But more often they are less intense, for example when enjoying a meal or watching a sunset on a beautiful summer evening. Since the seminal work in the 1990s by Barbara Fredricks...

Purpose The pupil dilation response is sensitive not only to auditory task demand but also to cognitive conflict. Conflict is induced by incompatible trials in auditory Stroop tasks in which participants have to identify the presentation location (left or right ear) of the words “left” or “right.” Previous studies demonstrated that the compatibilit...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) runs in families, but the neurobiological pathways underlying the genetic susceptibility towards SAD are largely unknown. Here, we employed an endophenotype approach, and tested the hypothesis that amygdala hyperreactivity to faces conditioned with a social-evaluative meaning is a candidate SAD-endophenotype. We used d...

Conflict adaptation reflects the increase in cognitive control after previous conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Tonic (sustained) arousal elicited by emotional words embedded in a conflict task has previously been shown to increase conflict adaptation. However, the role of phasic (transient) emotional arousal remains u...

Cognitive control is the ability to monitor, evaluate, and adapt behavior in the service of long‐term goals. Recent theories have proposed that the integral negative emotions elicited by conflict are critical for the adaptive adjustment of cognitive control. However, evidence for the negative valence of conflict in cognitive control tasks mainly co...

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is an incapacitating disorder running in families. Previous work associated social fearfulness with a failure to habituate, but the habituation response to neutral faces has, as of yet, not been investigated in patients with SAD and their family members concurrently. Here, we examined whether impaired habit...

According to feedback control models, errors are monitored and inform subsequent control adaptations. Despite these cognitive consequences, errors also have affective consequences. It has been suggested that errors elicit negative affect which might be functional for control adaptations. The present research is concerned with the temporal dynamics...

Cognitive control is the ability to monitor, evaluate and adapt behavior in the service of long-term goals. Recent theories have proposed that the integral negative emotions elicited by conflict are critical for the adaptive adjustment of cognitive control. However, evidence for the negative valence of conflict in cognitive control tasks mainly com...

E-Prime® is the leading software suite by Psychology Software Tools for designing and running Psychology lab experiments. The E-Primer is the perfect accompanying guide: It provides all the necessary knowledge to make E-Prime accessible to everyone. You can learn the tools of Psychological science by following the E-Primer through a series of enter...

The opioid system regulates affective processing, including pain, pleasure, and reward. Restricting the role of this system to hedonic modulation may be an underestimation, however. Opioid receptors are distributed widely in the human brain, including the more “cognitive” regions in the frontal and parietal lobes. Nonhuman animal research points to...

Background Patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) fear negative evaluation in social situations. Specifically, previous work indicated that social anxiety is associated with increased medial prefrontal cortex activation in response to unintentional social norm (SN) transgressions, accompanied by increased embarrassment ratings for such SN viol...

Focused-attention (FA) and open-monitoring (OM) meditation techniques differ with respect to top-down control of attention. In FA states, where attention is focused on target stimuli, increased top-down control narrows attention aperture. In contrast, OM states associated with monitoring awareness weaken top-down control to broaden attention. Desp...

Relationship between indices of social anxiety and gray matter characteristics, corrected for level of depressive symptoms (sensitivity analysis 2)

Detailed statistics of effects of social anxiety on, and heritability estimates of parameters of interest: general imaging phenotypes (tab 1); subcortical volumes (tab 2); cortical thickness (tab 3); cortical surface area (tab 4).

Detailed statistics of effects of social anxiety on parameters of interest in sample without comorbidity (sensitivity analysis 1): subcortical volumes (tab 1); cortical thickness (tab 2); cortical surface area (tab 3).

Illustration of interaction (sub)clinical SAD x age

Relationship between indices of social anxiety and gray matter characteristics in selection of LFLSAD sample: participants with (comorbid) psychopathology other than (sub)clinical SAD were excluded (sensitivity analysis 1)

Detailed statistics of effects of social anxiety on parameters of interest, corrected for level of depressive symptoms (sensitivity analysis 2): subcortical volumes (tab 1); cortical thickness (tab 2); cortical surface area (tab 3).

Detailed statistics of effects of social anxiety on, and heritability estimates of non-ROIs: subcortical volumes (tab 1); cortical thickness (tab 2); cortical surface area (tab 3).

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a disabling psychiatric condition with a genetic background. Brain alterations in gray matter (GM) related to SAD have been previously reported, but it remains to be elucidated whether GM measures are candidate endophenotypes of SAD. Endophenotypes are measurable characteristics on the causal pathway fr...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with altered social norm (SN) processing: SAD-patients rate stories on SN violations as more inappropriate and more embarrassing than healthy participants, with the most prominent effect for stories on unintentional SN violations (i.e. committing a blunder). Until now it’s unknown how levels of social anx...

The opioid system plays a key role in the regulation of affective processing including pain, pleasure, and reward. However, there is also increasing evidence that this system plays a broader role and can modulate cognitive function. In particular, increasing evidence suggests that the mu-opioid system influences how we choose between actions of dif...

The opioid system plays a key role in the regulation of affective processing including pain, pleasure, and reward. However, there is also increasing evidence that this system plays a broader role and can modulate cognitive function. In particular, increasing evidence suggests that the mu-opioid system influences how we choose between actions of dif...

Objectives: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a serious and prevalent psychiatric condition, with a heritable component. However, little is known about the characteristics that are associated with the genetic component of SAD, the so-called ‘endophenotypes’. These endophenotypes could advance our insight in the genetic susceptibility to SAD, as they...

The present research examined whether cognitive load modulates the neural processing of appetitive, high-calorie food stimuli. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, participants quickly categorized high-calorie and low-calorie food pictures versus object pictures as edible or inedible while they concurrently performed a digit-spa...

Pupillometry research has experienced an enormous revival in the last two decades. Here we briefly review the surge of recent studies on task-evoked pupil dilation in the context of cognitive control tasks with the primary aim being to evaluate the feasibility of using pupil dilation as an index of effort exertion, rather than task demand or diffic...

Overview results multiple regression analyses individual regions.

Scans excluded based on comorbidity other than anxiety and/or MDD.

Coordinates of findings summarized in the Discussion.

Details on in- and exclusion criteria for each site.

Testosterone plays an important role in social threat processing. Recent evidence suggests that testosterone administration has socially anxiolytic effects, but it remains unknown whether this involves early vigilance or later, more sustained, processing-stages. We investigated the acute effects of testosterone administration on social threat proce...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a prevalent and disabling mental disorder, associated with significant psychiatric co-morbidity. Previous research on structural brain alterations associated with SAD has yielded inconsistent results concerning the direction of the changes in gray matter (GM) in various brain regions, as well as on the relationship...

According to ideomotor theory, goal-directed action involves the active perceptual anticipation of actions and their associated effects. We used multivariate analysis of fMRI data to test if preparation of an action promotes precision in the perceptual representation of the action. In addition, we tested how reward magnitude modulates this effect....

Background Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a disabling psychiatric disorder, associated with high co-morbidity. Previous research on structural brain alterations associated with SAD has yielded inconsistent results concerning changes in gray matter (GM) in various brain regions, as well as on the relationship between GM and SAD-symptomatology . Th...

The present multimodal MRI study advances our understanding of the corticostriatal circuits underlying goal-directed versus cue-driven, habitual food seeking. To this end, we employed a computerized Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) paradigm. During the test phase, participants were free to perform learnt instrumental responses (left and right...