I am a clinical psychologist with a strong passion for research, clinical practice, and teaching. My PhD project is about attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and has the title The role of the locus coeruleus in arousal regulation deficits in ADHD. Together with my supervisors prof. Roeljan Wiersema and prof. Nico Boehler, I am investigating how the locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system of the brain might be functioning differently in ADHD, in order to advance our understanding of the interaction between behavior, arousal and neural activity in ADHD. I use pupillometry and fMRI to measure the activity of the locus coeruleus in adult participants with and without ADHD. This is done while the participants carry out certain tasks, which allow for the analysis of behavioral patterns. The physiological and behavioral responses are compared across different arousal states, to examine if and how they differ in ADHD.

 E-mail: leonhard.drescher@ugent.be

Publications:

Drescher, L. H., Van den Bussche, E., & Desender, K. (2018). Absence without leave or leave without absence: Examining the interrelations among mind wandering, metacognition, and cognitive control. PLoS ONE, 13(2). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191639

Drescher, L. H., Boehler, C. N., & Wiersema, J. R. (2021). State regulation in adults scoring high versus low on ADHD symptomatology: A pupillometry study. Neuropsychology, 35(5), 486–497. https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000738