Category Archives: Research

Another review of the year (here is 2022 and 2021), this time a bit late. In 2023, I… Here’s to a 2024 with more mental calm, enough time to spend with the people most important to me, several exciting papers to write, insight and wisdom.

The lab attended the NVP winter conference on Brain and Cognition in beautiful Egmond aan Zee. Philippa, Fenying, Sonja, Adrian and Anne presented posters on their work. Anne also gave a workshop on climate action in academia (more info and slides here).

Today, I was inaugurated as a member of the Young Academy Leiden, a group of early-career academics who think and work together on questions of research policy, outreach and interdisciplinary collaboration. The theme of the inauguration was ‘Engagement’, and each incoming member made a short video on the topic. See below for my contribution.

By Eleanor Holton and Anne Urai Do neuroscientists want to talk about climate change? Turns out they do, if we are to take anything from the CCN climate workshop which took place in Oxford a couple weeks ago. While a two-hour workshop after a days worth of packed neuroscience talks may not seem like aContinue reading “Climate action workshop @ CCN”

We visited the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience meeting in Oxford! We presented our science, met new and old colleagues and friends, and Anne hosted a workshop on climate action.

By Kasia Kruk A radical social transition needs to take place to prevent the climate change from progressing as rapidly as it is now. In order to achieve that, we need good communication tools, which could spread the environmental awareness and improve the understanding of the current climate action urgency. Over the past few monthsContinue reading “Comprehension of Data Visualisation”

This post is inspired by my brother Max Urai, the better writer of the family – two steps ahead in his thinking, as always. Why literature is a gift-economy (Rekto:Verso, in Dutch). I shamelessly copied some quotations. The pursuit of scientific knowledge works by virtue of the work of others. We stand on the shouldersContinue reading “Science as a gift economy”

By Philippa Johnson Review of: Daniel Hulsey, Kevin Zumwalt, Luca Mazzucato, David A. McCormick, Santiago Jaramillo. Decision-making dynamics are predicted by arousal and uninstructed movements. bioRxiv, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.02.530651 In a recent lab meeting, we discussed a preprint by Hulsey et al. (2023), which investigates whether fluctuations in arousal can account for some of the variabilityContinue reading “Preprint review: behavioural state shifts are predicted by fluctuations in arousal”

How to be an academic in a world on fire? As scientists concerned about the climate crisis, we set out to rethink the role and goals of the university in tackling the 21st century’s challenges. Inspired by Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, we propose seven new ways to thinking – not only to help us think, but alsoContinue reading “Doughnut science: rethinking academia in a time of climate crisis”

This week, a good friend (let’s call them W.) was facing a big decision: they got a job offer but were unsure whether to accept as it would come with some major life changes. W’s hesitation, doubt and slight panic reminded me of myself just 2 years ago. This quick blog describes some techniques forContinue reading “How to make big decisions”