FRANS VAN DEN HEUVEL | Trainee
Frans obtained a Bachelors in Medical Biology at Radboud University. During the course of his studies his interest shifted away from general medical biology towards the interplay between higher human cognition, involving (moral) choice, agency and planning, and the more basal urges and tendencies that are often described to push and pull peoples’ behavior in one direction or another. As he was observing these, often contradictory, forces within himself, questions regarding free will arose (i.e. do I do it, or does it do me?) and there appear - to him - to be large differences between people’s ability to temper these forces into more coherent behavior. After finishing his Bachelors, he joined the motivational and cognitive control lab to pursue his shift in interests, as part of a 6 month Masters internship. He works under supervision of Danae Papadopetraki on a project investigating the balance of cognitive stability and flexibility, and how this balance might be shifted in Parkinson’s disease patients.