Neural Synthesis

I am a computational and cognitive neuroscientist interested in how the brain gives rise to information processing and conscious experience. I work in complex systems neuroscience: I draw on network science and information theory to integrate multimodal neuroimaging and understand how the brain’s connectivity and dynamics support thought, perception, and awareness. Cross-species comparison is a cornerstone of my approach, to learn about evolution and to inform translation discovery. Through computational modelling, I distill these integrative discoveries into mechanisms. Neural Synthesis embodies this two-pronged approach: synthesis as integration, and synthesis as generation. I often look for the big picture: my background is in philosophy, and I view my work as using experimental methods to answer big-picture philosophical questions.

A major focus of my research is understanding how brain networks reconfigure across different states — such as wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia, and disorders of consciousness — and what these changes reveal about the neural mechanisms of information processing and conscious experience. I am also interested in bridging biological and artificial intelligence. My research programme is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust, St John’s College, Cambridge, and a European Research Council Starting Grant ROSETTA.

My work is interdisciplinary and collaborative to the core. Alongside my research, I advocate for interdisciplinary training and research (list of open resurces for Neuro-AI training), improving the research culture in neuroscience, and promoting access to higher education (‘Ten simple rules for aspiring graduate students’).

I regularly devote time to method-benchmarking efforts for the community, to increase reproducibility and credibility of neuroscientific results. Recent efforts include assessment of 700+ data-processing pipelines for trustworthy functional connectomics with fMRI (paper; interactive tool) and assessing the translational potential of macaque brain gene expression (paper; repo).

If you share any of the interests above, please get in touch!