IMAGEN
- a European research project on risk taking behaviour
in teenagers

IMAGEN is a European Research Project which aims to identify and learn more about biological and environmental factors that might have an influence on mental health in teenagers. This knowledge will then help develop better prevention strategies and therapies in the future.

The IMAGEN Study

IMAGEN is (the first study on this research topic) a major European-Commission funded project, using state-of-the-art technology from the (field of) behavioural neuroscience field, a field where medicine, psychology, physics and biology intersect in the study of human behaviour.  

• 2000 14 year old children with their parents/guardians as well as research teams from England, France, Ireland and Germany are involved in this project
• We are conducting this study in order to better understand the teenage behaviour and mental health
• The researchers want to find out what impact might certain attitudes and thinking styles, as well as certain brain activity patterns and genetic characteristics, have on teenage risk taking behaviour and mental health.
• Research methods will include self-report questionnaires, behavioural assessment, interviews, neuroimaging of the brain as well as blood sampling for genetic analyses.