{"id":184187,"date":"2025-12-11T11:42:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T10:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=184187"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:28:00","slug":"levens-zitten-vol-veranderingen-en-daarom-onderzoekt-yara-toenders-de-hersenen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2025\/12\/11\/levens-zitten-vol-veranderingen-en-daarom-onderzoekt-yara-toenders-de-hersenen\/","title":{"rendered":"Lives are full of change, and that\u2019s why Yara Toenders is researching the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yara Toenders likes to look into other people\u2019s lives. As a scientist and as a reader. With the book The eighth life (for Brilka)<\/em> by Nino Haratischwili she could lose herself in six generations. A bull\u2019s-eye.<\/p>\n

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The book The eighth life (for Brilka) <\/em>by Nino Haratischwili is \u2018one of the favourite books\u2019 of Yara Toenders. Her enthusiasm is shared by those around her. When she attended the theatre production of the same name, her uncle and aunt were sitting a row behind her and somewhere further along she spotted a friend. In the Netherlands nearly one hundred thousand copies of the book about six generations of a family in Georgia have been sold. What resonates?<\/p>\n\t

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Neurobiologist Yara Toenders earned her PhD at the University of Melbourne, where she researched the origins of depression in young people. She now works as a Healthy Start Fellow at Erasmus University. Her research focuses on the mental well-being of adolescents, from the biological to the social level. Biological factors she studies include brain development and sleep. Social factors include the smartphone ban and performance pressure. She recently received the Early Career Award from the KNAW.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

Curious about the life of others<\/h2>

Toenders likes to take a brief look into the lives of others. The book offered her a glimpse into seven lives at once, lives that are connected but each developing in their own way. Every life goes through different stages; when Toenders thought about which stage she had read with the most interest, she arrived at adolescence. The period, roughly between 10 and 24 years of age, which she studies as a neurobiologist. \u201cIn that period people start discovering the world, they become more themselves and they develop opinions that differ from those of their parents. The characters in the book start exploring, just like the young adults I see in my research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her scientific interest in adolescence began with the complex changes in the brain during this stage. Contrary to what people often think, the number of brain cells decreases during adolescence, Toenders explains. \u201cAt the same time, we call it a growth spurt, because the number of connections between the cells increases. In childhood, the brain is a densely overgrown forest with narrow paths; from puberty onwards some trees disappear, the paths widen and you can walk through the forest more easily and quickly, is the analogy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mood swings are normal<\/h2>

While she focused on young people dealing with depression during her PhD research, she now turns to the mental well-being of adolescents in general. And what turns out? \u201cMood swings and gloomy thoughts are part of growing up. In the period between 10 and 24 many people experience mood swings, but that period passes. Later in life those mood swings, on average, decrease again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The developments and changes that people undergo throughout their lives are of interest to Toenders. That is why she is so enthusiastic about the book The eighth life (for Brilka)<\/em> in which human lives unfold, and surprisingly enough it is also the reason she\u2019s interested in brains.<\/p>\n

Life-long brains<\/h2>

Brain scientists are sometimes accused of being deterministic, as if everything has already been decided, but Toenders emphasises the plasticity of the brain. \u201cYou can try to use the brain to explain or clarify something, but the brain itself also develops. The brain is never finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Toenders herself the exploratory phase that is so typical of adolescence began when, at eighteen, she left Wadenoijen, a small village near Tiel, and moved to Amsterdam. As a young mother she can now, through personal experience, relate to studies showing that the brain undergoes change during this stage.<\/p>\n\t

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Reading behaviour<\/strong><\/p>\n

Number of books per year: \u201cMy goal is two books a month, but for two years in a row I have read 23 books and therefore just missed my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Motivation: Losing myself<\/p>\n

Last read book: The anxious generation<\/em> by Jonathan Haidt. \u201cOutside the university the book is popular, but in the scientific world it is received negatively. The author claims that social media are bad for mental health, while there is little scientific evidence for that. In the studies that do exist it\u2019s always about correlations, not causations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Favourite genre: Novels. \u201cI cannot cope with suspense, so no thrillers, then I can\u2019t sleep anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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