Marieke Weijs
Curriculum Vitae
Marieke Weijs studied Neuroscience and Cognition at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. During her master’s degree she had her first research experience studying the sense of self and social functioning in patients with schizophrenia. She wrote her master thesis at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where she investigated how the experience of virtually swapping bodies influences the way people think about themselves. Marieke moved to Switzerland in 2017 to start a PhD with Prof. Bigna Lenggenhager at the University of Zurich. Her PhD research focused on the sense of bodily self throughout development. With the use of EEG and virtual reality, she assessed multisensory and interoceptive processes underlying embodiment in participants from 0 to 90 years old. After earning her PhD in November 2021, she continued her research on neural correlates of interoception in varying altered states of consciousness. Marieke joined the Neural Control of Movement lab as a postdoctoral researcher in October 2022.
Research Interests
Fundamental research shows that awareness of internal physiological signals has important implications in our behavior and wellbeing. During her PhD, Marieke focused on basic research questioning how people’s awareness of these physiological signals develops throughout the lifespan. At the Neural Control of Movement lab, she will explore neurofeedback techniques that allow people to self-regulate their physiological state, and their behavioral consequences. With her research she aims to bridge the gap between laboratory settings and real-world applications that improve self-regulation and wellbeing.