
Anne Urai
Assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. A.E. Urai
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 3371
- a.e.urai@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0001-5270-6513
As a cognitive neuroscientist, Anne Urai investigates how the brain transforms sensory information into useful decisions, and how such decisions change with experience. A particular focus lies on lifespan development and the neural basis of cognitive aging.
Research
As a cognitive neuroscientist, Anne Urai investigates how the brain transforms sensory information into useful decisions, and how such decisions change with experience. A particular focus lies on lifespan development and the neural basis of cognitive aging.
Her research combines psychophysics and computational modeling of behavioral data with electrophysiological recordings in humans and rodents. She is also a passionate advocate for team science, open science and reproducibility.
Short CV
Anne Urai studied cognitive neuroscience and philosophy at University College Utrecht, Xiamen University in China, University College London and École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
During her doctoral research in the lab of Tobias Donner at the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf and University of Amsterdam, she investigated how our previous choices bias the way we interpret later information, and how this process is affected by the confidence in our decisions.
She joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York as a postdoctoral fellow, investigating the neurophysiology of decision-making using high-density neural recordings in the mouse brain. During this time she was a core member of the International Brain Laboratory collaboration, working as part of a global team of systems and computational neuroscientists.
Her research in general focuses on the neural basis of decision-making across mammalian species, the interaction between learning and perception, and the neural basis of cognitive aging.
Assistant professor
- Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen
- Instituut Psychologie
- Cognitieve Psychologie
- Rae C., Farley M., Jeffery K. & Urai A.E. (2022), Climate crisis and ecological emergency: why they concern (neuro)scientists, and what we can do, Brain and Neuroscience Advances 6: 1-11.
- Urai A.E., Doiron B., Leifer A.M. & Churchland A.K. (2022), Large-scale neural recordings call for new insights to link brain and behavior, Nature Neuroscience 25: 11-19.
- Ashwood Z.E., Roy N.A., Stone I.R., The International Brain Laboratory, Urai A.E., Churchland A.K., Pouget A. & Pillow J.W. (2022), Mice alternate between discrete strategies during perceptual decision-making, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 25: 201-212.
- Meijer G.T., Arlandis J. & Urai A.E. (2021), There is no mouse: using a virtual mouse to generate training data for video-based pose estimation, Lab Animal 50: 172–173.
- Aguillon-Rodriguez V., Angelaki D., Bayer H., Bonacchi N.,Carandini.M., Cazettes F., Chapuis G.,Churchland A.K., Dan Y., Dewitt E., Faulkner M., Forrest H., Haetzel L., Hüsser M., Hofer S.B., Hu F., Khanal A., Krasniak C., Laranjeira I., Mainen Z.F., Meijer G., Miska N.J., Mrsic-Flogel T.D., Murakami M., Noel J.P., Pan-Vazquez A., Rossant C., Sanders J., Socha K., Terry R.,Urai A.E., Vergara H., WellsM., Wilson C.J., Witten I.B., Wool L.B. & Zador A.M. (2021), The International Brain Laboratory: standardized and reproducible decision-making in mice, eLife 10.
- Talluri B.C., Urai A.E., Bronfman Z.Z., Brezis N., Tsetsos K, Usher M. & Donner T.H. (2021), Choices change the temporal weighting of decision evidence , Journal of Neurophysiology 125: 1468–1481.
- Urai A.E.: Aguillon-Rodriguez V., Laranjeira I.C., Cazettes F., The International Brain Laboratory, Mainen Z.F. & Churchland A.K. (2021), Citric water as an alternative to water restriction for high-yield mouse behavior, ENEURO 8(1): 1-8.
- Varol E., Boussard. J., Dethe N., Winter O., Urai A.E., The International Brain Laboratory, Churchland A., Steinmetz N. & Paninski L. (2021), Decentralized motion inference and registration of neuropixel data. In: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Toronto: IEEE. 1085-1089.
- Whiteway M.R., Biderman D., Friedman Y., Dipoppa M., Buchanan E.K., Wu A., Zhou J., Bonacchi N., Miska N.J., Noel J-P., Rodriguez E., Schartner M., Socha K., Urai A.E., Salzman C.D., The International Brain Laboratory, Cunningham J.P. & Paninski L. (2021), Partitioning variability in animal behavioral videos using semi-supervised variational autoencoders, PLoS Computational Biology 17(9): e1009439.
- Gee J.W. de, Tsetsos K., Schwabe L., Urai A.E., McCormick D.A., McGinley M.J. & Donner T.H. (2020), Phasic arousal optimizes decision computations in mice and humans, eLife 9: e54014.
- Lak A., Hueske E., Hirokawa J., Masset P., Ott T., Urai A.E., Donner T.H., Carandini M., Uchida N. & Kepecs A. (2020), Reinforcement biases subsequent perceptual decisions when confidence is low, a widespread behavioral phenomenon, eLife 9: e49834.
- Aron A.R., Ivry R., Jeffrey K., Poldrack R., Schmidt R., Summerfield C. & Urai A.E. (2020), How can neuroscientists respond to the climate emergency? , Neuron 106(1): 17-20.
- Musall S., Urai A.E., Sussillo D. & Churchland A.K. (2019), Harnessing behavioral diversity to understand neural computations for cognition, Current Opinion in Neurobiology 58: 229-238.
- Urai A.E., Gee J.W. de, Tsetsos K. & Donner T.H. (2019), Choice history biases subsequent evidence accumulation, eLife 8.
- Talluri B.C., Urai A.E., Tsetsos K., Usher M. & Donner T.H. (2018), Confirmation bias through selective overweighting of choice-consistent evidence, Current Biology 28(19): 3128-3135.
- Colizoli O., Gee J.W. de, Urai A.E. & Donner T.H. (2018), Task-evoked pupil responses reflect internal belief states, Scientific Reports 8.
- Bergt A., Urai A.E., Donner T.H. & Schwabe L. (2018), Reading memory formation from the eyes, European Journal of Neuroscience 47(12): 1525-1533.
- Braun A., Urai A.E. & Donner T.H. (2018), Adaptive history biases result from confidence-weighted accumulation of past choices, Journal of Neuroscience 38(10): 2418-2429.
- Urai A.E., Braun A. & Donner T.H. (2017), Pupil-linked arousal is driven by decision uncertainty and alters serial choice bias, Nature Communications 8.
- Campana F., Rebello I., Urai A.E., Wyart V. & Tallon-Baudry C. (2016), Visual consciousness proceeds from global to local content in goal-directed tasks and spontaneous vision, The Journal of Neuroscience 36(19): 5200-5213.
- Urai A.E. & Murphy P.R. (2016), Commentary: sensory integration dynamics in a hierarchical network explains choice probabilities in cortical area MT, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 10(37).
- Urai A.E. & Pfeffer T. (2014), An action-independent signature of perceptual choice in the human brain. (Commentary), Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 34(15): 5081-5082.
- Brouwer A.M., Erp J. van, Kappé B. & Urai A.E. (2011), The brain as target image detector: the role of image category and presentation time. In: Schmorrow D.D. & Fidopiastis C.M. (Eds.) Foundations of Augmented Cognition. Directing the future of Adaptive Systems. Orlando: Springer. 3-12.
No relevant ancillary activities