Lab History
The laboratory was officially founded on December 1st, 2003, by biologist-psychologist Rudi D’Hooge, who was shortly before hired as professor of biological psychology by the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (K.U.Leuven). The faculty did not include an animal laboratory at the time, and the refurbishing of appropriate lab and animal rooms in the basement of the Psychological Institute was quite a challenge, both from a technical and scientific point of view.
The start of the laboratory was much facilitated by so-called impulse financing provided by the University’s research council, and promoted by experimental psychologist Johan Wagemans and several colleagues, who enthusiastically supported the founding of a biopsychology laboratory within the faculty.
The lab soon started to receive independent funding and initiated strong collaborations with research groups within and outside its own faculty and university. The first projects in the newly founded lab investigated effects of biological manipulations on mouse behaviour, mouse models of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental brain disorders, and biopsychological mechanisms of learning and memory. Psychologist Theo Meert (Janssen Pharmaceutica) was appointed visiting professor in 2004, which strengthened the lab’s interest in psychopharmacology and collaboration with (pharmaceutical) industry.
Subsequent hiring of biologist Detlef Balschun as a research professor in 2005 added expertise in electrophysiological recordings of synaptic plasticity, and the role of particular molecules in behavioural and neural plasticity. In 2010, another research professor joined the laboratory. Psychologist Hans Op de Beeck used his expertise in psychophysics, functional brain imaging, and in vivoelectrophysiology to study various processes of visual cognition, including category learning in rats.
The laboratory grew into a multidisciplinary and international research group that variably includes psychologists and biologists, biomedical scientists, biochemists, electrophysiologists, neuropharmacologists, and laboratory technicians.
