Prof Arjan Blokland (A.)

Arjan Blokland (30 Jan 1962) studied Psychology at the Radboud University (Nijmegen, NL). After receiving his PhD in Maastricht in 1992, he did a post doc at the University of Cambridge in 1992. This project was funded by NWO and investigated short-term memory processing in rats. In 1993 he took a position as laboratory head at Tropon (CNS research Bayer). He was responsible for testing novel compounds in animal models of aging and dementia. He successfully applied for a Royal Academy Fellowship (KNAW) grant and returned to Maastricht University in 1996. In this project the examined risk factors for cognitive aging and dementia. In 2009 he was appointed as an associate professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. His research is related to different topics related to learning and memory. One research line is related to psychopharmacology of learning and memory, with the main focus on the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. He also was involved in evaluating animal models of neurological disorders (eg. depression, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease). Since many years he has been involved in the evaluation of drugs on memory performance in animals and humans. The aim of these studies was also finding translational tools in examining the predictability of treatments in animals to humans. For this purpose he also used EEG measures to compare the performance and drug effects across species in different experimental paradigms. He has been working with various drug companies in characterizing newly developed drugs in animal models of learning and memory.  He has frequently been invited to present his data on international symposia (e.g., WCBR, ECNP) and industry (e.g., Roche, Eli Lilly). Since 2009 he is Head of Department Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology. In 2018 he was appointed as full professor of Comparative Neuroscience

In his academic career he was co-promotor of 13 PhD students and currently he co-supervises 5 PhD students. He published >200 papers in international peer reviewed journals. He provides review services for more than 30 journals and various (Inter)National Grant authorities (including the EU). He received various types of funding for his research and has many collaborations in Maastricht and the rest of the world.

His teaching is related to Biological Psychology in Bachelor and Master Programs. He has co-developed different teaching programs (e.g., Drug Development Master). During his career he was member of various committees and boards at the Faculty and the University.

updated: Aug 2022