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.

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  • Cheng et al. 2026

    Ziming Cheng, Nicole Brzozowski, Morris Moscovitch

    Memory, 34 (2026)

    A virtual take on the “doorway effect”: participants searched for objects in environments made of a single room, several identical rooms, or several distinct rooms. The authors show that crossing a spatial boundary changes both how long the interval feels and how well the order of events is remembered.

    Abstract

    People form structured memories from continuous experiences through event segmentation, a process often triggered by contextual changes that demarcate the boundaries between events. Event boundaries have been linked with changes in subjective time perception and memory.…

  • 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.…

  • 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. 2022

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

    Wellcome Open Research, 7:165 (2022)

    This is the study protocol for the AR and mobile EEG experiment also listed here, published before any data were collected — it sets out the hypotheses and the analysis plan in advance.

    Abstract

    The environments that we live in impact on our ability to recognise objects, with recognition being facilitated when objects appear in expected locations (congruent) compared to unexpected locations (incongruent). However, these findings are based on experiments where the object is isolated from its environment.…

More on the way. Peer review moves at its own pace. We'll add them the moment they land.