In her research, Irene investigates the functional and structural brain connectivity underlying decision-making behavior and performance improvement. She focuses on how frontal control functions cooperate with subcortical, more automatic processes to learn new and flexibly adapt existing action tendencies, and how these interactions change with increasing age. She is interested in the role of such functions in, for example, reinforcement learning, prospective memory, the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior, and emotion regulation. To investigate these questions, she combines behavioral measures in the lab (cognitive tasks, neuropsychological tests, questionnaires) and in daily life with neuroimaging methods (EEG, MEG, EMG, MRI).

Irene obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam, with Dr. Mike Cohen and Prof. Dr. Richard Ridderinkhof. Next, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. This position was funded by the Behavioural Science Institute based on an individual project proposal. She returned to the University of Amsterdam to do a second post-doc in the Habit Lab of Dr. Sanne de Wit. After interim teaching positions at the Vrije Universiteit and the University of Amsterdam, Irene started in 2021 at Utrecht University where she is working as an assistant professor in the department of Experimental Psychology.