My name is Lars Jaswetz and I am a PhD student at the EPAN lab. My supervisors are Karin Roelofs, Eni Becker, and Linda de Voogd. Together with them, I want to investigate the memory process called reconsolidation and its possible clinical applications in anxiety and/or trauma. Manipulating emotional memory reconsolidation could allow us to make highly negative emotional memories less arousing or negatively valenced by directly targeting the original memory. This in turn could help patients who suffer from disorders in which emotional memories play a role. Currently, a lot of research is conducted on manipulating reconsolidation through pharmaceutical means. However, behavioural interventions might offer a way to achieve the same results while being less invasive and easier to implement. Therefore, I want to test whether we can disrupt emotional memory reconsolidation with behavioural interventions that downregulate amygdala activity.
Before starting my PhD, I did a master in clinical psychology and a research master in behavioural science here at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.