You can follow me on Twitter @joebarnby

As a cognitive and computational neuroscientist, I am deeply interested in developing better theories of the brain and behavioural basis of social interaction, and how these might be used to explain and treat psychiatric and neurological disorders.

I develop mathematical models to study complex cognitive processes such as social observation and decision-making, hierarchical cognition, and reinforcement learning. My group uses computational, imaging, and psychopharmacological methods to better understand the brain basis of how we build beliefs about ourselves and others, in health and disorder. 

I currently hold an appointment as an Assistant Professor/ Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London where I lead the Social Computation and Representation (SoCR) lab. I also hold an adjunct research position at King’s College London (KCL) and the University of Western Australia (UWA). I am part of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence as a FENS-Kavli Scholar and the founder of Hypatia | Health and Hypatia | Finance.

Our most recent work:

The role of dopamine in encoding social maps during interpersonal exchange – Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial we probe the role of D2/D3 dopamine in social learning during dyadic exchange.

Beyond Theory of Mind: A Formal Interoperable Framework for Social Inference and Representation – We lay out a formal framework to capture interpersonal dynamics in humans and artificial agents

The Felt Presence experience: From Cognition to the Clinic  – We draw together scientific work that explains the feeling that someone is present in the room.

A new theoretical computational model of adaptive and maladaptive social strategy –  We develop a theory on the consequences of being inappropriately strategically complex, and how this may explain symptoms of psychopathology.

---

Research Opportunities

PhD Students. I am happy to discuss potential PhD opportunities in my lab. I am looking for candidates with a degree/experience in Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, Computer Science/Engineering or Maths/Statistics. Interest in open-source programming is needed, but loads of prior experience isn’t essential; I am happy to support your development with this. Please feel free to contact me by email. Please include a brief description of your research interests and your CV.

Postdoctoral Associates. I am also happy to discuss opportunities for joining the lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Please feel free to get in contact to discuss more. 

---

My work and public outreach have been funded and recognised by several major funding and scientific bodies such as the British Academy, Leverhulme Foundation, Wellcome Trust, British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP), Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS), and Medical Research Council (MRC).

You can read my scientific publications here and find my Google Scholar profile here.

You can find code libraries and software I have developed/assisted in developing for scientific purposes here. This includes open data from my past scientific work.

Current SoCR lab collaborators and partners:

  

      

               

    

   

We are very appreciative of the following organisations who currently or have generously provided funding for our research –