Ellen de Bruijn

Ellen de Bruijn is a Professor of Neurocognitive Clinical Psychology at Leiden University's Department of Clinical Psychology, within the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her research focuses on cognitive and neural mechanisms of action-control processes, particularly social performance monitoring and the impact of hormonal fluctuations across the female lifespan. She leads the Social Performance Monitoring Lab and is affiliated with the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC).

Her work integrates behavioral experiments, EEG, fMRI, and psychopharmacology to study adaptive behavior in social contexts, including studies on obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychopathy, depression, and schizophrenia. Notable grants include an ERC Consolidator Grant (2023) for female lifespan research and a Vici Grant (NWO, 2023). She advises PhD candidates like Federica Lucchi and Selin Topel and collaborates internationally.

Key research themes include hormonal fluctuations' effects on neurocognition (FLAME initiative), social resilience, and interdisciplinary mental health research. Her lab explores topics like oxytocin's role in social behavior, dopamine's influence on reinforcement learning, and ERP correlates of error processing in clinical populations.

• Awards: ERC Consolidator Grant (2023), Vici Grant (2023), Heinz-Heckhausen Young Investigator Award (2016)
• Labs/Teams: Social Performance Monitoring Lab, FLAME initiative, Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition
• Grants: EU-funded ERC project, NWO Vici, Lorentz Workshop sponsorships