Available Issues
March 2022 | Issue 13
The 13th issue of the ABC Journal takes the broad theme of “Adapting to Change”. In this issue, we reflect on the neuroscientific and behavioural insights into how we adjust and adapt to an everchanging world. Dive into original pieces including an exploration of cognitive flexibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, an interview with a climate anxiety researcher, and a compilation of MBCS students’ experiences with online learning. Interspersed are research papers and literature theses by MBCS alumni on exciting topics such as Default Mode Network modulation in ADHD patients, affective experience of walking in a city, and grapheme-color synesthesia.
Enjoy!
Issue’s password: ABCjournal13
July 2021 | Issue 12
This issue plunges into the topic of “My Brain, Your Brain, Our Brains: Uniqueness and Diversity” with research papers and literature thesis, as well as original pieces. Student theses cover topics of the modulation of gray matter in the brain from the hormonal pill, the characteristics of the psychopathy symptom-symptom network, and the impact on motivated reasoning for (un)sustainable food decisions. Continuing with the theme of the journal, the ABC journal team composed original pieces covering the relationship children have with robots, the female experience of Autism, disparities of people in color in psychedelic medicine research, the (non)sense of personality tests.
Dive in!
Issue’s password: ABCjournal12
February 2021 | Issue 11
This issue showcases The Art of Neuroscience through several fascinating papers. Four research papers were selected, discussing the use of prosody to mark information structure in individuals with autism, psychedelics and the predictive mind, time distortions, and dissociating contributions of periodic and aperiodic neural activity in human visual working memory. Moreover, the team was inspired by the theme to write about neuroesthetics and to interview Suzanne Dikker, talking about her experimental installations in museums. Additionally, the book ‘Proust was a Neuroscientist’ gets a thorough review and we provide advice to researchers seeking to improve science as a whole as well as their own scientific practices in terms of open science.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal11
June 2020 | Issue 10
Issue 10 focuses on the beautiful theme of Neuroscience in Society, which is explored in various ways. The issue contains four research papers, concerning connectivity during attentional focus, interpersonal affect regulation and empathic characteristics in Internet trolling, the neuropsychological consequences of complying to the delivery of an order, and structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and neuropsychological correlates in an elderly non-Western immigrant population. Moreover, three original papers were added, discussing the portrayal of consciousness in films, MRI data and open science, and an artist working with neuroscientific data. Lastly, a word cloud reveals people’s most salient associations with neuroscience, leading to an outside perspective on our field.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal10
June 2019 | Issue 9
Issue 9 is an intriguing read for those interested in or inspired by the complexity of the brain and the emergence of cognitive skills. Beginning with an article discussing what cognition and intelligence really are, this issue discusses the heterogeneity of the possible definitions of the two. The journal then moves on to the first of two research papers written by MBCS students, which investigates hallucinations in schizophrenic individuals using network measures. The reader is then presented with an in-depth investigation into the emergence of language, prior to the second of the two research articles, which explores the impact of choosing to view negative stimuli on physiological measures. Finally, this journal presents a book review of Complexity: A Very Short Introduction.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal9
February 2019 | Issue 8
Issue 8 captures both the broad ideas in cognitive neuroscience and the minute intricacies of neuroscientific methods. The first and final pieces provide a wider-scope perspective, where the first piece concerns the modularity of cognition, and the final a book review on Richard Passingham’s Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction. The pieces sandwiched between them, that form the bulk of the issue, delve deeper into more clinical topics such as the long-term effects of radiation therapy on white matter structures, sex hormones, and spontaneous neuronal activity in patients with hearing impairment and complex auditory hallucinations. The piece Finding Our Way through the Brain also gives a detailed recount of the evolution of neuroscientific methods. This way, issue 8 covers broader ideas in cognitive neuroscience, which round off the Issue, while also zooming in on specific, and fascinating, methods and findings in the field.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal8
June 2018 | Issue 7
Issue 7 is all about taking an ethical perspective. First, Vincent Thijms shortly discusses the General Data Protection Regulation and its link MBCS. Subsequently, topics of the research papers include the hyperarousal theory of insomnia, software for automated quantification of flexible behaviour, localist and distributed representation models, auditory-visual synesthesia, the consciousness of visual awareness and underlying mechanisms of parochial cooperation. The original articles discuss the future of AI, animal testing, scientific journalism and their role with ethics. Moreover, an interview was conducted with neuroethicist and philosopher Pim Haselager, which resulted in a fascinating conversation about ethics education and AI.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal7
February 2017 | Issue 6
Issue 6 features a variety of research papers, ranging from fMRI studies on financial risk taking in the prefrontal cortex, working memory in the visual cortex and the influence of image contrast in the occipital cortex using population receptive fields. Further projects discuss the effect of attention on steady state evoked potentials in EEG research and the use of open source software to classify mouse behaviour. The issue features three interviews, including the ventures of Leo van Brussel in scientific consulting, seven questions on academic publishing with Dr. Tim Kietzmann and lastly, Maite van der Miesen discusses the position of women science with department heads Inge Huitinga and Valeria Gazzola. Finally, Amber Brands considers the pros and cons of the rise of smartphones in a book review on Is daar iemand? by Wouter van Noort.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal6
June 2016 | Issue 5
Issue 5 goes into a structural change and divides the content into three chapters representing three tracks of MBCS: Behavioural Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. If you want a review of all the great articles this issue contains, check the word clouds featuring most frequent words that are used in these articles. The BNS chapter features two research papers, of which the first one is about GluA3 plasticity and has been selected as the Editor’s Pick of this issue. Following the article, there is a short Q&A with the author, Anna Lien Bouhuis. The second article concerns sodium influx in the axon during AP initiation and propagation. In this chapter, you can also find abstracts of two other research papers by CNS students, as well as a review of the book That’s just the way I am! by Willem van der Does and Peter van Straaten. The CNS chapter consists of three research articles on pupil dynamics and decision making, awe experience and reinforcement learning. If you want to explore more, there are ten abstracts to take a look at. The chapter closes with another book review: Liefde by Mark Mieras. Lastly, the CS chapter has one article, which is about economic decision making, and presents two other abstracts. Finally, you can find an interview with Dr. Sam Schwarzkopf on academic writing. We highly recommend you to take a look at the hilarious back cover.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal5
February 2016 | Issue 4
Issue 4 analyses interesting psychological and societal phenomena within the field of neuroscience, ranging from the investigation of cognitive domains to studies in marketing psychology. Students and experts together touch upon topics such as the impact of nutrition labels on the consumer decision-making process and interbrain synchrony during a multi-player video game, while also digging into the specific implications of alpha oscillations in visual information processing. This issue alternates highly specialized scientific inquiries with broader discussions, such as the ones about memory and the participation of scientists in ethical debates. It also provides the reader with refreshing Q&A sessions with the authors of the papers, who are alumni of University of Amsterdam and affiliates. To spice things up, the issue offers an easy and fun tutorial on how to play with the DeepArt algorithm to create images. At last, former editor in chief Mike X Cohen and Dr. Renée Visser hand out valuable academic advice. Specifically, Mike Cohen bestows pragmatic tips useful during the path to a PhD position and Dr. Visser shares some of her opinions on academic publishing.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal4
June 2015 | Issue 3
Issue 3 showcases fabulous research conducted by the students of the MBCS program, from investigating disorders such as depression, phenylketonuria, and insomnia to understanding how we use models to find neurobiological differences between people and the role of pyramidal neurons in impulsive decision making. The issue begins with the Editor’s Pick, an article which investigates the neurodynamics of auditory letter perception in blind and sighted humans. Have any questions regarding academic publishing? Good news! This issue features an interview regarding academic publishing with Ilja Sligte, an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, which may be able to answer those questions for you! Curious about the lives of students after the master’s? This issue also features an interview with a previous MBCS student, Guido Meijer, about his research working at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences.
Issue’s password: ABCjournal3
February 2015 | Issue 2
The second issue of ABC Journal presents selected articles from diverse fields showing the interdisciplinarity of our master’s. Subjects vary greatly from executive control to misophonia; from action observation and action experience in toddlers to processing of behinds in chimpanzees and artificial grammar learning. If you don’t have time to read the full reports of all the fabulous research done by MBCS students, we have some good news. This issue also contains abstracts of seven research projects to give you some taste of these research papers. Finally, Dr. Judith E. Rispens and two Ph.D candidates, Jelle Bruinberg and Berno Bucker, answer seven questions about academic publishing. If you wonder how peer-reviewing and publishing processes work, don’t forget to have a look at these interviews.
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June 2014 | Issue 1
This issue marks the launch of the ABC Journal in 2014. A team of motivated MBCS students and ABC members created this journal with the idea of sharing the research conducted by students of the program while offering students the opportunity to improve their scientific communication skills. The first issue offers a great variety of complex and well-designed electrophysiological studies. Ranging from EEG correlates of cognitive control and the neural bases of the transition from goal directed to habitual behaviour to exploring transcranial directed current stimulation as a modulatory yet non-invasive intervention for alcoholism and feedback guided learning in a virtual navigation task.
As editor in chief Michael X Cohen points out in the very first editorial, a lifetime of amazing scientific discoveries is wasted if no one learns of them, and those words have henceforth continued to inspire the work of the ABC journal team.
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