Healthy Brain

The challenges of today are more complex and dynamic than ever, and they explicitly call for collaboration between different disciplines to achieve sustainable, innovative, and effective solutions. Healthy Brain brings professionals from the Nijmegen campus together with the focus on complex problems with the goal of promoting health and mental well-being.

On the campus, you can find many initiatives, activities, and stakeholders that are engaged in relevant work related to the brain, cognition, behavior, and the improvement of health and mental well-being. However, answers are seldom expected to come from one or a few fields alone. The societal questions of today demand a strong connection within this landscape. Healthy Brain pillar is a campus-wide initiative within which professionals of the Radboud University, Radboudumc and HAN collaborate and strive to make societal impact. We connect existing initiatives and activities from various fields and, through an inter- and transdisciplinary approach, hereby increasing opportunities for campus to make difference in the world. The goal is to harness the power of the campus as a whole to contribute to societal challenges and issues.

Het publiek kon tijdens het symposium The Future of the Mind, georganiseerd door Radboud Healthy Brain, vragen stellen aan de sprekers

Symposium The Future of the Mind - 25 April 2024

On digital technology, healthy brains and public policy, organised by Radboud Healthy Brain

On Thursday, April 25th, Radboud Healthy Brain organised the symposium The Future of the Mind. With keynote speaker Emily Murphy (law professor and behavioral neuroscientist) and other experts we discussed the promises and risks of digital technology for a healthy brain. What is the impact of modern digital technology on brain, cognition, and behavior, and more broadly, well-being? Should the answers to this question inform public policy and law, and if so, how? What are the opportunities and what are the risks of this frequent use of digital technologies for our brain, our mental capital, and our (mental) health?

Read the conference proceedings

Researches were happy to talk about their research during the poster sessions

Poster sessions

During the lunch break of the symposium, we didn’t just sit still! In the Trigon hall, many researchers presented their research projects via posters. An overview of the posters:

  • The Healthy Brain Study: Investigating the human brain in its biosocial context using wearables
  • Radboud Centre for Decision Science: Driving impact through the science of decision-making
  • Prevention (section plan medical science): A substantial and long-term reinforcement of the prevention infrastructure
  • Mocia: Maintaining optimal cognitive functioning in ageing, a personalized lifestyle prevention approach
  • The Personalized Parkinson Project: Developing new measurements of disease progression
  • Radboud AI: Radboud Artificial Intelligence, a campus-wide initiative
  • Healthy Data: Radboud Healthy Data Programme

 You can easily request the PDF files of the posters by emailing healthybrain [at] ru.nl.

Emily Murphy was one of the speakers during the lecture of Radboud Reflects - How do new digital technologies such as AI affect our cognitive well-being?

Radboud Reflects: The Future of the Mind in a Digital Society

Lecture and conversation with lawyer and behavioral neuroscientist Emily Murphy and brain scientist Alan Sanfey

In the evening, after Emily Murphy’s lecture, cognitive scientist Alan Sanfey and philosopher Tamar Sharon spoke to her about the effects of digital technologies on our collective cognitive capital in De Lindenberg. The evening programme was organised by Radboud Reflects.

Read here the full report

News

Prof. dr. Emily Murphy was keynote spreker tijdens het symposium The Future of the Mind, georganiseerd door Radboud Healthy Brain

Consider people's brain health in new policies too

Policymakers should not make choices based on economic growth and productivity but on Collective Cognitive Capital, says Emily Murphy in her opening speech at The Future of the Mind symposium.

Liveillustrator Bert was aanwezig om het symposium georganiseerd door Radboud Healthy Brain te visualiseren

Visualizing complex information: a picture paints a thousand words

On Thursday 25 April, top researchers at Radboud University took to the stage during the symposium on ‘The Future of the Mind’, organised by Radboud Healthy Brain. This time, the audience not only comprised researchers but also a live illustrator.

Kees Verhoeven en Sander Schimmelpenninck tijdens het symposium The Future of the Mind

Sander Schimmelpenninck: ‘Social media are eroding our democracy’

Social media negatively influence the political process and that awareness is insufficiently present, arguee journalist Sander Schimmelpenninck and entrepreneur and former MP on behalf of D66 Kees Verhoeven.

Mission statement

Radboud University is known worldwide for its excellence in fundamental research on brain, cognition and behaviour. To generate societal impact based on the scientific excellence in this domain, Radboud University has launched the Healthy Brain initiative. Multiple societal issues and problems could benefit from the input of our science. We will not do this in isolation. Collaboration between different disciplines and co-creation of societal impact with relevant stakeholders and problem owners are key.  Healthy Brain organises events and meetings with policymakers, politicians, journalists, grant providers, and other relevant stakeholders such as patient organisations, companies and NGOs, to identify relevant contributions our researchers can make, under the Radboud-wide slogan 'You have a part to play'.

Contact information

0625771408
Postal address
Houtlaan 4
6525XZ NIJMEGEN