Inge Timmers PhD
Assistant Professor
TSB: Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
TSB: Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology
Inge.Timmers@tilburguniversity.edu
Room
T 523
Bio
My name is Inge Timmers and I am Assistant Professor at the department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at Tilburg University, as well as Visiting Professor at the department of Rehabilitation Sciences at Ghent University (BE). Before this, I worked at the department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Maastricht University (NL) and the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain (BPP) lab at Stanford University (US). Broadly, I am interested in using experimental psychology and neuroimaging as tools to probe psychosocial mechanisms in chronic health conditions, including persistent pain.
Expertise
Most of my research focuses on (chronic) pain. In short, my work aims towards a better understanding of why some individuals experience chronic pain while others do not, which factors contribute to that and how treatments work to improve the lives of those living with pain. I apply this to youth and adults with chronic pain.
More broadly, I aim to better understand why individuals behave the way they do. Think of why certain situations are avoided, even if they may be highly rewarding. And how our traits, expectations or stress impact such approach-avoidance behavior.
My key research lines focus on
- mechanisms underlying and modulating pain and related learning (e.g., threat learning)
- (neural) mechanisms underlying psychological interventions (e.g., exposure in vivo for pain-related fear)
- parental distress and its impact on their child’s pain-related functioning
- (flexibility in) approach-avoidance behavior in the context of pain