Draft:Esther Aarts

Esther Aarts (born in Eindhoven, 1980) is a cognitive neuroscientist working as a principal investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour. She is the head of the Food & Cognition research group at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (DCCN). Aarts focuses mainly on the gut-brain axis and nutritional neuroscience to investigate how food affects brain function, for example, via the immune system or via intestinal bacteria. To examine body-brain connections, Aarts uses brain scans (functional MRI), biological measurements, and interventions with food supplements, medication, or lifestyle coaching. Aarts is also the project leader of the public-private project “Maintaining Optimal Cognitive Functioning In Aging” (MOCIA) as part of the Crossover program from NWO, which unites industry, academia, and government.

Education and Career
Aarts’ academic journey started in 1999 at Radboud University in Nijmegen, then completed a MSc in Neurobiology in 2004. She obtained her PhD in Cognitive Neurosciences at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour in 2009 under supervision of Dr. Ardi Roelofs (Donders Centre for Cognition) and Dr. Miranda van Turennout (Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging). Her PhD thesis, titled “Resisting temptation: The role of the anterior cingulate cortex in adjusting cognitive control”, focused on the regulation of resisting temptations in order to act in a goal-oriented manner.

Between 2008 and 2010, Aarts held a postdoctoral psychiatry position with Roshan Cools at Radboud UMC. Afterwards, she got a Niels Stensen postdoctoral fellow position at UC Berkeley with Mark D’Esposito until 2012. Her project centered around the interaction between motivation and cognition, and understanding the role of dopamine in it. In 2012, awarded with an AXA and a NWO-Veni grant, Aarts returned to the Cools lab, specialising on the effects of food reward on cognition. Aarts has held her role as an associate principal investigator and coordinator of the Food & Cognition research group at the Donders Institute since 2017. In the meantime, she was awarded an ERC starting grant in 2019. In 2022, she was appointed as a full professor of Nutritional Neuroscience at the Faculty of Sciences of Radboud University, where she teaches Food and Brain Health. Other affiliations include being an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Nutrition, and a Review Editor for Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Research: How Nutrition affects Behaviour
Together with her team, the group aims to investigate the behaviour of people towards food from a decisional and motivational perspective, and to understand the effects that food decisions and emotions have on brain and behaviour in obesity, in aging and in psychiatric conditions, such as ADHD. In studying these effects of food on brain functioning the Food & Cognition lab also takes the gut microbiome and the immune system into account. Previously, Aarts has investigated what kind of motivational control is associated with poor eating habits, such as when people eat beyond satiety. She explored whether this could be explained by automatic (habitual) responses and/or goal-directed and consequence-based control. To this end, Aarts studies how variations in the activation of certain brain regions that are dopamine-rich predict whether someone will put effort into getting a sugary reward when they are no longer hungry. In conclusion, a lot of her research aims to further the knowledge in the field of obesity.

Public Educational Sources
Aarts has participated in public engagement initiatives, either contributing directly through talks or podcasts, or by references to her work in public media. Anyone can access her past appearances in TV programs providing information on healthy eating from a neuroscientific perspective (‘Focus: Eten we ons ziek?’ [in English: ‘Focus: Are we eating ourselves sick?’] and ‘Voeding en Ons Brein’ [in English: 'Nutrition and Our Brain'], episode ‘Verleiding’ [in English: 'Temptation'] ). The same can be said for podcast episodes in both English and Dutch ('Over de Kop: Eten' [in English: 'About the head: Eating'] ; 'In a Nutshell (VOX): Are We What We Eat?' ; 'Leefstijllab: De wisselwerking tussen voeding, hersenen en gedrag' [in English: 'Lifestyle lab: The interaction between nutrition, brain and behavior'] ), aimed at educating the general public. She has also written outreach articles, for instance on the effect of nutrition on neurological disorders like ADHD.

Societal impact: Governmental project “Maintaining Optimal Cognitive Functioning In Aging”
Aarts is also the project leader and coordinator of the public-private project “Maintaining Optimal Cognitive Functioning In Aging” (MOCIA). The project proposed by Aarts is one of the first five in the Crossover program, which consists of several public-private partnerships (PPP) involving the Dutch government, industry, and universities, with the research being financed by the NWO. MOCIA is aimed at helping older citizens in achieving and maintaining a healthy brain through a healthy lifestyle. This project proposes lifestyle interventions in older Dutch adults at risk for cognitive decline based on individual differences, behavioral changes, biological mechanisms, predictive factors, and e-Health technology. The project was assigned €9.17 million, of which €6.25 million is funded by NWO. Other co-financing partners include Danone Nutricia Research, IMEC (OnePlanet Research Center), DSM Nutritional Products, VGZ Salut, Hersenstichting, Reckitt Benckiser/Mead Johnson Nutrition, Alzheimer Nederland, and Wageningen Food & Biobased Research.

Awards and Grants
Aarts has been the recipient of several grants and awards. Below are three noteworthy examples:
 * Crossover grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for Maintaining Optimal Cognitive function in Ageing (MOCIA)
 * Veni grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for “Breaking the habit: the neural correlates of mindful eating”
 * ERC Starting Grant in 2019 for “The obesity spiral: Inflammation and effortless fast food choices”

Representative publications