Tom Beckers is professor of psychology (research professor) at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of KU Leuven, Belgium and affiliated faculty member at the Department of Clinical Psychology of the University of Amsterdam. His research concerns fundamental processes of learning and conditioning in infant and adult humans and in rodents, using behavioural, neurobiological, and computational techniques. He also has a strong interest in the role of learning and conditioning in psychopathology (particularly fear, addiction and ADHD).
Tom Beckers obtained his PhD from KU Leuven (2002). Before joining the University of Amsterdam in 2008, he has been an FWO Research Fellow at the KU Leuven (2002-2008), visiting assistant professor at Binghamton University (2003-2004) and visiting scholar at UCLA (2007). He is research professor of psychology at KU Leuven since 2014 (associate research professor 2010-2014).

• KU Leuven home page

Recent sample publications:

• Arnaudova, I. , Krypotos, A.-M., Effting, M., Boddez, Y., Kindt, M., & Beckers, T. (2013). Individual differences in discriminatory fear learning under conditions of ambiguity: A vulnerability factor for anxiety disorders? Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 298.
  Open Access at http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00298
• Beckers, T. , Krypotos, A.-M., Boddez, Y., Effting, M., & Kindt, M. (2013). What's wrong with fear conditioning? Biological Psychology, 92, 90-96.
  Open Access at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.12.015

• Boddez, Y., Callaerts-Vegh, Z., Vervliet, B., Baeyens, F., D'Hooge, R., Hermans, D., & Beckers, T. (2012). Stimulus generalization and return of fear in C57BL/6J mice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 6, 41.
  Open Access at http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2012.00041

• Bos, M. G. N., Jacobs van Goethem, T. H., Beckers, T., & Kindt, M. (2014). Cortisol response mediates the effect of post-reactivation stress exposure on contextualization of emotional memories. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 50, 72-84.
• Krypotos, A.-M., Effting, M., Arnaudova, I., Kindt, M., & Beckers, T. (2014). Avoided by association: Acquisition, extinction, and renewal of avoidance tendencies towards conditioned fear stimuli. Clinical Psychological Science, 2, 336-343.
• Sevenster, D., Beckers, T., & Kindt, M. (2013). Prediction error governs pharmacologically induced amnesia for learned fear. Science, 339, 830-833.

No known ancillary activities