Nikhil Yadav

EDUCATION

College / University

Tilburg University

Highest Degree

Bachelor of Science

Major Subjects

Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence

India

Lab Experience

Working with EEG and fNIRS, Time series analysis, Designing and conducting visual psychophysical experiments, Topological analysis, Dimensionality Reduction techniques, Deep learning techniques, Biophysical modelling of neural networks, Bayesian statistics, Computational Linguistics

Projects / Research

2024-2025: Thesis – “Computational Modelling of the Auditory Cortex: Integrating Predictive Coding and Neural Entrainment to explain the Mismatch Negativity”; at Tilburg University, The Netherlands
2024-2025: Exploring a link between Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), a personality trait, and Neural Adaptation; under Dr. Koen Haak and Dr. Tessa van Leeuwen at Tilburg University
2024: Analysis of rat sleep data in prefrontal cortex and hippocampus with unsupervised and topological methods; at Donders Centre for Neuroscience (DCN) in the lab of Dr. Lisa Genzel
2023-2024: Research on how humans combine evaluative and descriptive components of language using large language models; under Dr. Giovanni Cassani and Dr. Matteo Colombo at Tilburg University

Scholarships / Awards

Stipend by the International Max Planck Research School

SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS AND GOALS

My primary interests lie in understanding how the brain performs computations across scales to generate adaptive behavior. Thus theoretical/computational and systems neuroscience suit me best. I believe that a lot of creative thinking comes from forming questions, which requires a combination of curiosity, perspectives, courage and epistemic humility. I also think in terms of the problems of perception (what exists) and action (what to do and why) that a species must solve during natural selection. In some species, these problems are also socialized and hence interactions among individuals, like insects, are quite interesting to me. Particularly, how the problem of action is solved through motor/planning skills and their fundaments, the motivational and emotional structures, are interesting to me. I also find the dynamic features of reality much more revealing and fundamental, for instance, seeing the brain as a set of interacting oscillations most exemplified by sleep. Hence, I am interested in dynamical systems theory. Furthermore, I am interested in biophysical modeling and connecting the models to real data, for instance, EEG.