prediction and learning lab
Principal Investigator
Rebecca Lawson
Becky is Professor of Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Affiliated Scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. She is also Royal Society Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellow, Autistica Future Research Leader and Principal Investigator of the PaL Lab.
She received a first class honours degree in Psychology & Philosophy from the University of Glasgow (2002-2006), before completing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge (2006-2010). Her PhD was supervised by the late Dr Andrew Calder, and investigated adaptive gain control mechanisms and top-down processing in social cognition. As a postdoctoral scientist at University College London she researched the computational and neurobiological mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Her notable contributions to research include combining computational modelling and high-resolution imaging methods to examine how negative expectations are processed in major depressive disorder, and most recently advancing a computationally informed theory of neural gain and sensory expectations in autism that has been written up in Science.
Becky's research has been covered in many major news outlets (The New York Times, The Times, The BBC, NPR – Science Friday, Time Magazine) and has been recognised with the BNPA Lishmann Prize, the SOBP Early Career Investigator Award, the BAP Psychopharmacology Award, the UCL Neuroscience Early Career Research Prize and the Lister Institue Research Prize.
Becky values public engagement, and has been involved with the knit-a-neuron, Guerilla Science and most recently with @PrideinSTEM. You can find a profile of her contributions to LGBT+ diversity in science in Communications Biology.
Current
Tom Murray (postdoc)
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Nazia Jassim (postdoc)
For her PhD research, Nazia used a variety of cognitive neuroscience techniques, from behavioural experiments to ultra-high-resolution 7T MRI and MR Spectroscopy, to investigate visual perception, systemising (i.e., pattern learning), and brain function in autistic adults. Nazia’s PhD was co-supervised by Prof. John Suckling and Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen at the ARC and Dr. Rebecca Lawson in the PaL Lab. She is now a postdoc in the PaL Lab and continues to work on learning under uncertainty.
Prior to her doctoral studies in Cambridge, Nazia completed a Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and a Bachelor’s in Biology at the Women’s Christian College, University of Madras, India. For her Master’s research, Nazia used fMRI to study emotion processing in adolescent depression.
Read more about Nazia’s research on Google Scholar or her personal website.
Nazia likes to unwind with horror movies, cat videos, spicy food, and 90s music.
Millie Lowther (postdoc)
Millie has a MSci in Natural Sciences from UCL, where she majored in Neuroscience and Psychology and minored in Mathematics and Statistics. Her master’s research project, supervised by Robb Rutledge and Rachel Bedder, modelled the relationship between reward/loss expectancy and mood. Following this, she worked in the science team at Cambridge Cognition, before joining the Neuroscience and Mental Health Lab at UCL ICN where she completed her PhD with Prof Oliver Robinson. Her PhD research investigated the neurobiological mechanisms underlying ambiguity interpretation and treatment response in anxiety disorders using fMRI.
She is currently a postdoc working in the PaL lab (jointly with Tim Dalgleish at the CBU), investigating the mechanisms underlying uncertainty processing in anxiety and how these are altered by treatment.
In her spare time, Millie likes cooking (mostly eating, mostly pasta), reading, dancing and karaoke.
Claudia Lage (Parke-Davis Fellow)
Claudia obtained a MSc in Mental Health Studies from King’s College London before joining the PaL lab as a PhD student in 2020. She has just submitted her PhD on cognitive flexibility, uncertainty and repetitive behaviours in autism; and is now a postdoc on a prestigious Parke-Davis Exchange Fellowship. Claudia will continue her work on data-driven methods to identify subgroups in diagnosed autistic adults, whilst also making a research visit to the Sudhodolsky Lab at the Yale University Department of Medicine. Hailing from a clinical psychology background, Claudia hopes to one day be a clinician-scientist working at the intersection of research and treatment.
In her spare time, she enjoys travelling, dancing, and cooking (and eating).
Calum Guinea (PhD student)
Calum has a BSc in Psychology from Royal Holloway and an MRes in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCL. At UCL his research project on mood and loss aversion was supervised by Robb Rutledge and Rachel Bedder. Before joining the PaL Lab he worked as a research assistant at the Psychopharmacology and Emotion Research Lab in Oxford on a project aiming to understand the mechanisms of ketamine's rapid antidepressant action.
In October, 2021 he started a PhD with Rebecca broadly on learning and motivation. These two behaviours and their combination are in interesting basis on which to disentangle the often overlapping symptoms of depression and anxiety. His PhD will focus on describing these symptom-level effects on how we learn and how we use what we've learned in the past to make effort-based choices in the present.
In his spare time he likes to play the keyboard badly, take photos of things (mainly nature) and go to gigs.
You can follow him on Twitter here and read his publications here.
Tim Sandhu (PhD student)
Tim graduated with BSc Natural Sciences from UCL, where his undergraduate project reviewed the utility of active inference in computational psychiatry. He then undertook an RA position with Sanjay Manohar, investigating the role of dopamine in self-generated action and motor control in Parkinson’s Disease. He came to the PaL Lab as an RA in 2019, where he was involved in preparing the cam-raa project, establishing a relationship with the autism community, and contributing to online studies/the Covid survey.
In 2020 Tim became to a PhD student at the MRC CBU, primarily supervised by Rebecca and James Rowe. His project will focus on understanding how response to and learning under uncertainty might be underpinned by the noradrenaline-locus coeruleus system, and considering how a altered response to uncertainty may be a core aspect of psychopathology.
In his spare time, Tim likes to cook and swim, although not always at the same time. You can find him on Twitter.
Bowen (Eddie) Xiao (PhD student)
Eddie completed a BA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He came to the PaL lab for his MPhil in Biological Science (Psychology), during which he assisted with the CamRAA project and reviewed the computational psychiatry literature on learning under uncertainty. He later became a visiting student with Noham Wolpe, during which he worked on mouse-tracking and effort-based decision-making.
In 2023, he started his PhD in the PaL lab, where he is studying the interplay between attention, uncertainty, and pupil-linked arousal. He is also working on hypervigilance, and loves computational modelling.
In his spare time, Eddie attempts to exercise via badminton, and unwinds by walking to various corners of the green space that surrounds Cambridge.
You can find out about Eddie’s publications here and follow him on Bluesky.
Friederike Hedley (PhD Student)
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Affiliates
Ido Shalev
Ido is a clinical psychology researcher who completed his PhD at Ben-Gurion University under the supervision of Prof Florina Uzefovsky. His doctoral research focused on empathy in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, exploring how empathic disequilibrium — the imbalance between emotional and cognitive empathy — helps clarify a unique reorganisation of emotions and cognitions that some individuals experience when engaging with others’ feelings, and its potential relationship to psychopathology.
He is now a postdoc at the MRC-CBU in Tim Dalgleish’s lab, and an affiliated researcher in the PaL Lab, where he investigates intolerance of uncertainty in individuals with generalised anxiety disorders as well as transdiagnostic characteristics of mental health conditions.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Ido completed a BSc in Biology and Psychology, and an MA in clinical psychology at Ben-Gurion University.
In his spare time, he enjoys reading, travelling, visiting art museums, and playing the guitar. You can follow him on Twitter and read his publication here.
Ellie Smith
Ellie was a postdoc in the lab from its inception until 2022. Ellie headed up the infant studies in the lab using fNIRS and modelling to understand how we learn to build expectations in infancy and how these mechanisms change across development.
Ellie is now a Research Manager at the Positive Group
You can check out Ellie's Google Scholar here and find her on Twitter here.
Benjamin Illingworth
Benji graduated from UCL with a Batchelor of Medicine in 2019. He is now an Academic Clinical Fellow at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. with the Cambridge University Department of Psychiatry. He is a full-time Academic Foundation Doctor (FY2) and spends his research placements - based within the PaL lab, working on projects related to information sampling and psychopathology.
You can check his Twitter here.
Brónagh McCoy
Brónagh was a postdoc in the PaL Lab until 2023 and, in addition to many other things, she largely oversaw the CamRAA project - a large-scale effort to understand the mechanisms of overlap between autism and anxiety. Brónagh came from a PhD at the VU Amsterdam, and after a brief stint at Cambridge Cognition, is now a researcher at Kings College London.
You can find out about Brónagh's publications here and check out her Twitter here.
Addison Billing
Addison combines HD-DOT and eye-tracking to understand cognitive processing in infants. She was a postdoc in the PaL lab from 2020-2024 following on from a PhD at UCL. Addie has stayed at Cambridge and is now a postdoc in the School of Clinical Medicine where she is investigating DOT applications for early identification of hearing loss in early life.
Addison enjoys fencing, eating baked goods, and going for long walks with Lucy the Labrador. For cute puppy pictures interspersed with a little science, you can follow her on Twitter.