Hello, my name is Zhang, Wei. I had obtained master degrees in Psychology (MA, 2010) and Cognitive Neuroscience (Msc., 2013) before I started working on the PIA project as a PhD student at the Donders Institute: Centre for cognitive neuroimaging. My general research interest lies in the neurobiological mechanisms by which we can differentiate “normal” and “deviated” behaviors. In my PhD project, I will be mainly focusing on the resting state data that we collect from the PIA project, a longitudinal study aiming to reveal the neurobiomarkers that can predict the vulnerability/resilience to developing stress-related disorders after the exposure to extremely stressful events. More specifically, I will investigate the influences of resting state networks as well as the hormonal, genetic and epigenetic factors on individual differences in stress-related responses.
Selected publications:
Zhang W, Groen W, Mennes M, Greven C, Buitelaar J, Rommelse N (submitted). ‘The’ neuroanatomy of autism spectrum disorder does not exist. Gender and age specific patterns of structural brain correlates.
Rausch A, Zhang W, Haak KV, Mennes M, Hermans EJ, van Oort E, van Wingen G, Beckmann CF, Buitelaar JK, Groen WB (2016). Altered functional connectivity of the amygdaloid input nuclei in adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder: a resting state fMRI study. Molecular Autism 2016 Jan 28;7:13. doi: 10.1186/s13229-015-0060-x. eCollection 2016.