dr. A (Anita) Harrewijn

Biography

Why do some adolescents develop anxiety disorders, while others do not? And how can we use this knowledge for more effective interventions?

I study neural and behavioral correlates of attention bias and social stress to answer these questions. I study social and neural moderators of the temperament-anxiety association using Generation R data, as part of my Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship. Before, I was a post-doctoral researcher at the NIMH with Dr. Daniel Pine and Prof. Nathan Fox. I led several fMRI and behavioral studies with children with and without anxiety disorders and analyzed data from a 16-year longitudinal fMRI study. I have received my PhD in Developmental Psychology from Leiden University (The Netherlands). My dissertation focused on delineating electrophysiological endophenotypes of social anxiety disorder.

Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Assistant professor | Clinical Psychology

Email: harrewijn@essb.eur.nl

Work

Julia O. Linke, Reut Naim, Simona P Haller, Parmis Khosravi, Beck Scheinberg, Meghan E Byrne, Anita Harrewijn, Ellen Leibenluft, Melissa A Brotman, Anderson M Winkler & Daniel S Pine (2026) - Reduced Threat-Related Neural Efficiency: A Possible Biomarker for Pediatric Anxiety Disorders - American Journal of Psychiatry, 48-57 - doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.20241043
Marcelo Malbec, Anita Harrewijn, Ingmar H.A. Franken & Matthias J. Wieser (2025) - The uncertain path to reward: Neural mechanisms of intolerance of uncertainty in reward processing - Cortex, 192, 227-241 - doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.09.010 - [link]
Janna Marie Bas-Hoogendam, Rachel A. Bernstein, Brenda E. Benson, Samuel E.C. Frank, Kristin A. Buss, Kelley E. Gunther, Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Giovanni A. Salum, Andrea Jackowski, Rodrigo A. Bressan, André Zugman, Kathryn A. Degnan, Courtney A. Filippi, Nathan A. Fox, Heather A. Henderson, Alva Tang, Selin Zeytinoglu, Anita Harrewijn, Manon H.J. Hillegers, Ryan L. Muetzel, Tonya White, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, Carl E. Schwartz, Julia M. Felicione, Kathryn A. DeYoung, Alexander J. Shackman, Jason F. Smith, Rachael M. Tillman, Yvonne H.M. van den Berg, Antonius H.N. Cillessen, Karin Roelofs, Anna Tyborowska, Shirley Y. Hill, Marco Battaglia, Marco Tettamanti, Lea R. Dougherty, Jingwen Jin, Daniel N. Klein, Hoi Chung Leung, Suzanne N. Avery, Jennifer Urbano Blackford, Jacqueline A. Clauss, James M. Bjork, John M. Hettema, Ashlee A. Moore, Roxann Roberson-Nay, Chelsea Sawyers, Elizabeth P. Hayden, Pan Liu, Matthew R.J. Vandermeer, H. Hill Goldsmith, Elizabeth M. Planalp, Thomas E. Nichols, Paul M. Thompson, P. Michiel Westenberg, Nic J.A. van der Wee, Nynke A. Groenewold, Dan J. Stein, Anderson M. Winkler & Daniel S. Pine (2025) - Structural Brain Correlates of Childhood Inhibited Temperament: An ENIGMA-Anxiety Mega-Analysis - Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2025.06.026 - [link]
Corey Richier, André Zugman, Anita Harrewijn, , Elise Cardinale, Parmis Khosravi, Moji Aghajani, Willem Bruin, Kevin Hilbert, Narcís Cardoner, Daniel Porta Casteràs, Marta Cano, Savannah Gosnell, Ramiro Salas, Andrea Jackowski, Pedro Pan, Giovanni Salum, Karina Blair, James Blair, Mohammed Milad, Katie Burkhouse, K Luan Phan, Heidi Schroeder, Jeffrey Strawn, Katja Beesdo-Baum, Neda Jahanshad, Sophia Thomopoulos, Jared Nielsen, Jordan Smoller, Jair Soares, Benson Mwangi, Mon-Ju Wu, Giovana Zunta Soares, Michal Assaf, Gretchen Diefenbach, Paolo Brambilla, Eleonora Maggioni, David Hofmann, Thomas Straube, Carmen Andreescu, Rebecca Price, Gisele Manfro, Federica Agosta, Elisa Canu, Camilla Cividini, Massimo Filippi, Milutin Kostic, Ana Munjiza Jovanovic, Brenda Benson, Gabrielle Freitag & Ellen Leibenluft (2025) - Brain Age Prediction in Generalized Anxiety Disorder using a Convolutional Neural Network - Research Square - doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6866544/v1
Yara Toenders, Eveline Crone, Ryan Muetzel, Michelle Achterberg, Amine Bakkali, Neeltje van den Bedem, Eva Borkhuis, Caroline A. Figueroa, Ruth Van der Hallen, Anita Harrewijn, Pauline Jansen, Julian Schaap, Wanda Tempelaar, Danielle de Veld & Danielle Remmerswaal (2025) - A Healthy Start: Een Mentaal Gezonde Basis voor de Huidige Generatie Jongeren - Jeugd in Ontwikkeling - doi: 10.54447/JiO.19550
Grace M. Stohr, Anita Harrewijn, Santiago Morales, Selin Zeytinoglu, Zoë E. Laky, Parmis Khosravi, Elise M. Cardinale, Nicole Lorenzo, Joel Stoddard, Daniel S. Pine, Nathan A. Fox, Melissa A. Brotman & Simone P. Haller (2025) - Adolescent cognitive control processing is associated with anxiety in young adulthood during the COVID-19 pandemic - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 25 (5), 1485-1495 - doi: 10.3758/s13415-025-01293-1 - [link]
Peter A Kirk, Purnima Qamar, Andre Zugman, Rany Abend, Samuel Frank, Grace V Ringlein, Laura Jett, Gwyneth A L DeLap, Anita Harrewijn, Daniel S Pine & Katharina Kircanski (2025) - The Relations Among Anxiety, Movie-Watching, and in-Scanner Motion - Human Brain Mapping, 46 (4) - doi: 10.1002/hbm.70163 - [link]
Anita Harrewijn, Rosa H. Mulder, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, Matthias J. Wieser & Pauline W. Jansen (2025) - Four distinct peer interaction variables as moderators of the fearful temperament-anxiety association, using data from the Generation R Study - JCPP Advances, 5 (1) - doi: 10.1002/jcv2.12254 - [link]
Elizabeth R. Kitt, Rany Abend, Paia Amelio, Jordan Galbraith, Anjali D. Poe, Dylan G. Gee, Daniel S. Pine & Anita Harrewijn (2025) - Using mobile eye-tracking to evaluate gaze behavior during a speech in pediatric anxiety disorders - Journal of Affective Disorders, 369, 462-466 - doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.024 - [link]
Christel M. Portengen, Anita Harrewijn, Anneloes L. van Baar & Joyce J. Endendijk (2025) - Gender-Differentiated Emotion Socialization: Evoked by Child Behaviors, Parents’ Neural Responses Toward Gender-Stereotype Violations, or Both? - Parenting, 25 (1), 39-65 - doi: 10.1080/15295192.2024.2426679 - [link]