Dr Matthew Nour
mattnour.bsky.social
Dr Matthew Nour
@mattnour.bsky.social
MD PhD | NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry.
Cog Neuro | Computational Psychiatry | NeuroAI
University of Oxford and UCL
Pinned
🚨 Job adverts LIVE! 🚨

We want to understand how the brain supports abstract cognition in psychosis, using cutting-edge neuroscience.

Non-Clinical RA:
lnkd.in/eva-Zzfj

Clinical RA:
lnkd.in/eSgdad_F

Postdoc:
lnkd.in/eid8gtbR

Oxford University
Due June 23
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
🧠 How do transformers learn relational reasoning? We trained small transformers on transitive inference (if A>B and B>C, then A>C) and discovered striking differences between learning paradigms. Our latest work reveals when and why AI systems generalize beyond training data 🤖
June 6, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
🚨 Job adverts LIVE! 🚨

We want to understand how the brain supports abstract cognition in psychosis, using cutting-edge neuroscience.

Non-Clinical RA:
lnkd.in/eva-Zzfj

Clinical RA:
lnkd.in/eSgdad_F

Postdoc:
lnkd.in/eid8gtbR

Oxford University
Due June 23
May 28, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
“The gender-equality paradox entails that countries with more equality have larger gender differences in behavior. Positive associations between equality & gender differences disappear or reverse when accounting for cultural clusters of countries. The paradox appears to be a methodological artifact”
Simpson’s gender-equality paradox | PNAS
Several cross-country examinations have found larger gender differences in Western countries. More recently, it has been argued, from an evolutiona...
www.pnas.org
June 11, 2025 at 5:33 AM
🚨 Job adverts LIVE! 🚨

We want to understand how the brain supports abstract cognition in psychosis, using cutting-edge neuroscience.

Non-Clinical RA:
lnkd.in/eva-Zzfj

Clinical RA:
lnkd.in/eSgdad_F

Postdoc:
lnkd.in/eid8gtbR

Oxford University
Due June 23
May 28, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
How do cognitive maps fail? And how can this help us understand/treat psychosis? My lab at @oxexppsy.bsky.social is hiring a Postdoc tinyurl.com/2p935hhz and RA tinyurl.com/3myfpb78 to answer these questions in mouse models.
Here's why you might want to join: 🧵
April 8, 2025 at 10:54 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
2-The people: you’ll be part of an ambitious and highly collaborative team studying psychosis in humans and neural networks led by @mattnour.bsky.social at @oxfordpsychiatry.bsky.social @drrickadams.bsky.social at @ucl.ac.uk and @mariaeckstein.bsky.social at DeepMind
April 8, 2025 at 10:54 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
New paper from our lab now in @nature.com . We show that our brains use basis functions or "building blocks" to navigate social interactions. Rather than tracking every individual separately, social information is compressed into patterns that can be flexibly combined. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Basis functions for complex social decisions in dorsomedial frontal cortex - Nature
A study combining group decision-making tasks with fMRI shows that the brain’s dorsomedial prefrontal cortex uses basis functions, similar to those in the visual, motor and spatial domains, to re...
www.nature.com
March 13, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
📢 Register now: 🚨
The registration for the Computational Psychiatry Conference 2025 in Tübingen is now open - register and get the early bird discounts:
www.conftool.com/cpconf2025/i...
#CPConf2025
March 7, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
March 6, 2025 at 7:16 PM
❗RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES❗

We're hiring for an ambitious @wellcometrust.bsky.social project exploring brain mechanisms of planning/inference in psychosis 🧠

Tackled at multiple scales: from single neurons to human behaviour/fMRI and neural networks.

Opportunities for 1 post-doc 1 clinical fellow 👀
💥 Some POST DOC JOB news 👀... I'm very happy to say that @melgaby.bsky.social, @mattnour.bsky.social, @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and I have been awarded funding from @wellcometrust.bsky.social to look at how planning 📝and mental models of the world 🌍 are affected by psychosis...
February 20, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
Hope you'll forgive a quick thread as I take over as the new EiC of @elife.bsky.social
January 30, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
Comment on our recent paper challenging the link between MMN dysfunction and positive symptoms:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks @mattnour.bsky.social

I may have missed it but cognitive map dysfunction is also unrelated to positive symptoms so far?
If Mismatch Negativity Is the Answer, What Is the Question? On the Nature of Predictive Coding Abnormalities in Psychosis
www.sciencedirect.com
January 29, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
Our symposium on structure knowledge biases in psychopathology was accepted at #CPConf2025!

with
@mattnour.bsky.social
@mgarvert.bsky.social
@carocharp.bsky.social

Talks will span social learning, inductive inference in planning, language representation & map-based generalization.

Can't wait!
January 27, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
Curious to see how they plan to anonymise our NHS data for training ML models. I personally wouldn’t know how to start doing that

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
January 13, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Very excited to lead this work at @ox.ac.uk. We're developing computational tools for neuroimaging data and naturalistic behaviour, some based on LLMs. We hope these will yield new insights into the mechanisms of CNS drugs, neurobiology of psychosis, and human cognition more broadly.
🌟 We’re thrilled to announce new funding for 8 brilliant scientists through our Launchpad Grants in #MentalHealth! 🌟

These exceptional researchers are tackling critical mental health challenges - from #ADHD and youth mental health to psychosis: www.medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk/news/new-rou...
Medical Research Foundation | New round of mental health ‘launchpad’…
www.medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk
January 6, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
In principle, ~10^15 bits needed to specify all connections in brain assuming any wiring diagram is possible

In practice, much less needed. Indeed innate behaviors must fit in the genome (~10^9 bits in humans)

So: GPT4 has enough parameters. Just not the right ones

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Encoding innate ability through a genomic bottleneck | PNAS
Animals are born with extensive innate behavioral capabilities, which arise from neural circuits encoded in the genome. However, the information ca...
www.pnas.org
December 23, 2024 at 3:29 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
We're going all out to try and understand mechanisms of cognitive symptoms in psychosis - including human neuroimaging with @mattnour.bsky.social, computational work with @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and @drrickadams.bsky.social and mouse electrophys/optogenetics with me ... watch this space!
💥 Some POST DOC JOB news 👀... I'm very happy to say that @melgaby.bsky.social, @mattnour.bsky.social, @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and I have been awarded funding from @wellcometrust.bsky.social to look at how planning 📝and mental models of the world 🌍 are affected by psychosis...
December 20, 2024 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
💥 Some POST DOC JOB news 👀... I'm very happy to say that @melgaby.bsky.social, @mattnour.bsky.social, @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and I have been awarded funding from @wellcometrust.bsky.social to look at how planning 📝and mental models of the world 🌍 are affected by psychosis...
December 20, 2024 at 12:13 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
There's a movement in neuroscience suggesting we should be pursuing bigger bets with larger teams. I think there's a case for doing a bit of this, but I think it's a bad idea to prioritise it for two reasons, and a good case for saying we should be moving in the exact opposite direction. 🧠🧪
December 18, 2024 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
We have a starter pack that we will continue to expand that represents the #MentalHealth and #Neuroscience research community.

Please let us know if we missed you!

#Psychology #AcademicSky #Research

go.bsky.app/6LKA9F4
December 16, 2024 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Dr Matthew Nour
OK If we are moving to Bluesky I am rescuing my favourite ever twitter thread (Jan 2019).

The renamed:

Bluesky-sized history of neuroscience (biased by my interests)
December 1, 2024 at 8:29 PM
I'm happy to share our Review article, "Cognitive Maps and Schizophrenia", synthesising evidence for representation-level abnormalities in the condition, and proposing directions for future work. Out now in Trends in Cognitive Science.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
November 19, 2024 at 6:12 PM