About

Hi, I'm Rob! I'm a computational cognitive neuroscientist interested in how the brain learns and organises information for intelligent behavior. I am a Researcher (Tenure-track) at the Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet) and Guest Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University in Japan. 

My lab is interested in learning, memory, and cognitive control, with a focus on concept learning and semantic concept representation. Learning is key for knowledge acquisition and adapting to the environment. As Spreat & Spreat (1982) said, "much like the laws of gravity, the laws of learning are always in effect”. How is abstract knowledge learnt and integrated into our existing knowledge of the world? Cognitive control is key for both intelligent behaviour (planning and action) and for learning (acquiring knowledge to act appropriately). Effective learning requires cognitive control - selection of relevant amongst irrelevant aspects of the world, whilst organizing and encoding information into memory.

Project topics include concept learning, representation and the formation of long-term semantic concepts in the brain and models (deep neural networks, e.g., convolutional and transformer models). We are using vision and multimodal models and we are getting interested in multimodal integration in concept representation (vision-language, vision-audition). I had previously got into spatial cognition and how neural representations of space (e.g., place, grid cells) may (or may not) related to abstract concepts. We are also interested in how learning and memory systems change as we age, especially how aging affects new concept acquisition and semantic concept representations in the brain.

We use behavioural experiments, neuroimaging, and computational modelling (cognitive models & deep neural networks) to try to figure out how we learn, think, and represent things in the mind - and how it all comes together in the brain!

Potential PhD students and Postdocs

We welcome those with Psychology / Cognitive Neuroscience backgrounds who want to pursue model-based behavior & neuroimaging projects, and also welcome those with a Computer Science / Engineering / Computational backgrounds who want to get into neuroscience, e.g., training deep learning models to capture concept knowledge representation - we have lots of compute (GPUs, etc.) at CiNet to pursue ambitious computational projects! Other backgrounds also welcome. People from all backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientation are very welcome to join the lab! Contact me to discuss possibilities!

CiNet building based in Suita Campus, Osaka University: