I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Image Sciences Institute of the UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands, and have a background in nutritional science and epidemiology. My PhD work was aimed at establishing the potential of implicit markers (brain activation, visual attention and reaction times) for predicting food choice and gaining more insight into the decision-making processes underlying food choice, such as self-control. I like to work on multidisciplinary topics, combining (consumer-)psychology, biology and neuroscience and to explore the use of novel (analysis) techniques for the study of food choice.
To facilitate integration across studies and meta-analyses, our task in the Nudge-It project is to set up a measurement toolbox for subject/consumer characterization and a data-sharing and analysis platform specifically tailored to Nutritional Neuroscience.
Key publication relevant for Nudge-It:
Van der Laan, L. N., De Ridder, D. T. D., Viergever, M. A., and Smeets, P. A. M. (2011). The first taste is always with the eyes: A meta-analysis on the neural correlates of processing visual food cues. NeuroImage, 55:296-303.