About

As we experience the world, our brains encode statistical regularities between events and their outcomes as probabilistic “beliefs.” We rely on these beliefs to organize new information, optimize behavior, and navigate an uncertain world. When signals weaken and uncertainty grows, we come to rely on our beliefs with greater and greater weight.

​Our lab seeks to understand how higher-order socioecological environments influence belief formation and how these beliefs are then integrated with sensory information to influence behavior and subjective experience. We use machine learning, neuroimaging (especially fMRI), psychophysiology (SCR, heart rate, pupil dilation, etc), behavioral measures, naturalistic datasets, and large online studies to answer these questions.

Announcements

Sept 2026
•Royal society has awarded us a grant to pilot a pain reinforcement learning task in the 7T
Jan 12, 2026
•Our lab has moved to the Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow.
Nov 20, 2025
•DANA Foundation awarded bridge funding in response to unexpected changes at the NIH.
​Lab logo is designed by Stephen Trotto.