Entries by Ben Seymour (60)
Ben Seymour
Register NOW for our Virtual Reality workshop! [12-14th Dec 2022]
https://sites.google.com/view/oxford-vr-workshop/home?authuser=0
We are pleased to invite you to our interdisciplinary workshop to explore the value and applicability of virtual reality and related technologies to pain. The workshop will combine talks across a range of topics including the use of VR to basic and clinical pain research, insights from movement science, the design of novel XR therapies, and the integration of VR technologies and art.
The workshop will follow a hybrid format, with the talks taking place in the mornings of 12-14th, and with the practical workshop on the afternoons of 12th and 13th.
The UKRI Chronic Pain Neurotechnology Network+
We're delighted to announce we have been awarded a UKRI/EPSRC Network+ to build capacity and drive innovation in neurotechnology for chronic pain.
Website coming in the new year, and details of what we're doing and how to join.
...with Valerie Sparkes (Cardiff), Sam Hughes (Plymouth), Helen Dawes (Exeter) and Aleksandra Vuckovic (Glasgow).
Now out: Computational and neural mechanisms of statistical pain learning [Nov 2022]
Pain invariably changes over time. These fluctuations contain statistical regularities which, in theory, could be learned by the brain to generate expectations and control responses. We demonstrate that humans learn to extract these regularities and explicitly predict the likelihood of forthcoming pain intensities in a manner consistent with optimal Bayesian inference with dynamic update of beliefs. Healthy participants received probabilistic, volatile sequences of low and high-intensity electrical stimuli to the hand during brain fMRI. The inferred frequency of pain correlated with activity in sensorimotor cortical regions and dorsal striatum, whereas the uncertainty of these inferences was encoded in the right superior parietal cortex. Unexpected changes in stimulus frequencies drove the update of internal models by engaging premotor, prefrontal and posterior parietal regions. This study extends our understanding of sensory processing of pain to include the generation of Bayesian internal models of the temporal statistics of pain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34283-9
Post-doc position available -
We are looking for at a new post-doc here at Oxford. The main criteria is to engage in novel and ambitious research in the area of pain, aversive learning, fear conditioning.
Apply here:
https://my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.display_form?p_company=10&p_internal_external=E&p_display_in_irish=N&p_process_type=&p_applicant_no=&p_form_profile_detail=&p_display_apply_ind=Y&p_refresh_search=Y&p_recruitment_id=159121
Feel free to contact me with any questions at ben.seymour@ndcn.ox.ac.uk