Research

Publications

A collection of peer-reviewed research built with SilicoLabs software, spanning reinforcement learning, cognitive neuroscience, and experiments that take the lab into the real world.

  • Sun et al. 2023

    Chen Sun, Wannan Yang, Thomas Jiralerspong, Dane Malenfant, Benjamin Alsbury-Nealy, Yoshua Bengio, Blake Richards

    Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 (NeurIPS 2023)

    This study was conducted by researchers at Mila and McGill, testing AI agents that replicate human cognition. Yoshua Bengio, one of the godfathers of AI, is one of the authors, and this article was accepted by NeurIPS in 2023.

    Abstract

    In real life, success is often contingent upon multiple critical steps that are distant in time from each other and from the final reward. These critical steps are challenging to identify with traditional reinforcement learning (RL) methods that rely on the Bellman equation for credit assignment.…

  • Nicholls et al. 2025

    Victoria I. Nicholls, Alexandra Krugliak, Benjamin Alsbury-Nealy, Klaus Gramann, Alex Clarke

    Imaging Neuroscience, 3 (2025)

    This study was, to our knowledge, one of the first psychology experiments using AR and mobile EEG. The researchers placed digital objects throughout the Cambridge campus and recorded participants’ EEG data as they navigated the campus and encountered these objects.

    Abstract

    Objects in expected locations are recognised faster and more accurately than objects in incongruent environments. This congruency effect has a neural component, with increased activity for objects in incongruent environments.…