Dr Rebecca Lawson University positionLecturer Dr Rebecca Lawson is pleased to consider applications from prospective PhD students. DepartmentsInstitutesBehavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit Home pagehttps://www.lawsonlab.co.uk/ (personal home page) Research ThemesInterestsWe all have expectations about how the how the world should look, feel, smell, taste and sound. These expectations act as predictions to guide us when we are uncertain, and signal when something out of the ordinary is happening. My work uses computational models, pharmacology and brain imaging to understand how humans learn to build adaptive expectations about the world around us, other people and ourselves. The aim is to understand how and when predictions are realised in the brain, how these mechanisms develop in babies and how they might underlie individual differences in how the world is experienced by people with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric conditions. Research Focus
EquipmentBehavioural analysis Computational modelling Eyetracking Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) Neuropsychological testing Pharmacology Collaborators
Associated News ItemsKey publicationsRP Lawson, C Mathys, G Rees (2017), “Adults with autism overestimate the volatility of the sensory environment” Nature Neuroscience RP Lawson, CL Nord, B Seymour, DL Thomas, P Dayan, S Pilling, J Roiser (2016), “Disrupted habenula function in major depression” Molecular Psychiatry RP Lawson, B Seymour, E Loh, A Lutti, RJ Dolan, P Dayan, N Weiskopf, & J Roiser (2014), “The habenula encodes negative motivational value associated with primary punishment in humans” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences RP Lawson, G Rees, KJ Friston (2014), “An aberrant precision account of autism” Frontiers in human neuroscience Publications2018CJ Palmer, RP Lawson, S Shankar, CWG Clifford, Rees G (2018), “Autistic adults show preserved normalisation of sensory responses in gaze processing” Cortex 2017C McGettigan, K Jasmin, F Eisner, ZK Agnew, OJ Josephs, AJ Calder, Jessop R, Lawson RP, Spielmann M, Scott SK (2017), “You talkin’to me? Communicative talker gaze activates left-lateralized superior temporal cortex during perception of degraded speech” Neuropsychologia CJ Palmer, RP Lawson, J Hohwy (2017), “Bayesian approaches to autism: Towards volatility, action, and behavior.” Psychological Bulletin 2016B de Haas, DS Schwarzkopf, I Alvarez, RP Lawson, L Henriksson,de Haas, DS Schwarzkopf, I Alvarez, RP Lawson, L Henriksson, Kriegeskorte N, Rees G (2016), “Perception and processing of faces in the human brain is tuned to typical feature locations” Journal of Neuroscience D Rivolta, RP Lawson, R Palermo (2016), “More than just a problem with faces: altered body perception in a group of congenital prosopagnosics.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology RP Lawson, AJ Calder (2016), “The “where” of social attention: Head and body direction aftereffects arise from representations specific to cue type and not direction alone” Cognitive neuroscience 2015RP Lawson, J Aylward, S White, G Rees (2015), “A striking reduction of simple loudness adaptation in autism” Nature Scientific Reports RP Lawson, KJ Friston, G Rees (2015), “A more precise look at context in autism” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2013KJ Friston, R Lawson, CD Frith (2013), “On hyperpriors and hypopriors: comment on Pellicano and Burr” Trends in cognitive sciences RP Lawson, WC Drevets, JP Roiser (2013), “Defining the habenula in human neuroimaging studies” Neuroimage 2011MP Ewbank, RP Lawson, RN Henson, JB Rowe, L Passamonti, AJ Calder (2011), “Changes in “top-down” connectivity underlie repetition suppression in the ventral visual pathway” Journal of Neuroscience RP Lawson, CWG Clifford, AJ Calder (2011), “A real head turner: Horizontal and vertical head directions are multichannel coded” Journal of Vision 2009RP Lawson, CWG Clifford, AJ Calder (2009), “About turn: The visual representation of human body orientation revealed by adaptation” Psychological Science |