Sammi Chekroud

I am a postdoc in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) lab, headed by Prof. Jill O'Reilly, and a Tutor for Statistics for the BA/MSci in Experimental Psychology.

Our perception of the environment around us is part bottom-up sensory input, and part top-down prior knowledge, and we maintain internal representations of recently sampled information to guide our perception and action. Yet to make decisions based on these internal representations, we must evaluate their uncertainty to decide how they're used.

My research focuses on how we generate precise internal representations of our sensory world, and how this gives rise to our psychological experience of uncertainty which shapes how we interact with the world. I use a combination of psychophysical methods, physiological recordings (eyetracking and EEG), and computational modelling of behaviour and brain activity.

I completed by BA in Experimental Psychology in 2015 at Oxford, before working as a research assistant in the Brain and Cognition Lab for three years. I then completed my DPhil in Experimental Psychology in 2022 before starting as a postdoc in the CCN lab.

I also have a strong interest in the use of large, pre-existing datasets to enhance mental health treatments and care. I worked part-time on a collaboration with researchers at Yale, and industry partners, to further investigate the association between exercise and mental health.