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Edinburgh PhD in Neuroscience: Testing Shared Computations Across Behavioural Tasks

Project 2240 · University of Edinburgh · School of Neurological and Cardiovascular Sciences (College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine)

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Country or region
United Kingdom
Application deadline
2026-11-16 (confirm the exact time with the source)
Funding
Four-year EASTBIO/BBSRC competition; available materials state a 30% cap on international awards but do not specify its denominator or scope, so it cannot be treated as a project-specific allocation or an individual award probability. Successful international awardees may receive a fee-gap waiver; individual award and 2027/28 stipend unconfirmed; £21,805/year is the 2026/27 UKRI benchmark; visa/IHS excluded.

The research opportunity

Edinburgh PhD in Neuroscience: Testing Shared Computations Across Behavioural Tasks

Research question and doctoral work

Are learning, flexibility, perception and social behaviour separate abilities, or do they reflect a small set of shared computations? The project plans to train the same rats on four task types using a fully automated, high-throughput platform: accumulating noisy sensory evidence, switching between opposite rules on a cue, pure perceptual discrimination and social interaction. The advert says each animal may contribute hundreds of thousands of trials; this is a project-scale resource and target claim. Verify the records achieved, how many tasks each rat completes and the number of independent animals.

The student will use large language models within evolutionary search to develop candidate cognitive models as short programs, fit them to an individual animal's choices, score predictions of future behaviour and iteratively modify them. The central test is whether parameters from one task predict the same animal's behaviour in others, supporting or challenging a shared cross-task dimension. Readable code or accurate prediction alone does not establish a unique psychological mechanism. Training spans automated behavioural hardware and experimental design, machine vision and pose tracking, reinforcement learning, recurrent networks, large-scale data analysis and LLM-assisted scientific discovery. The project includes animal and hands-on hardware work, although previous animal experience is not required. Electrophysiology, optogenetics and neurodevelopmental models are wider lab interests, not advertised requirements for this PhD.

School and doctoral training

The University of Edinburgh awards the degree. The advertised host is the School of Neurological and Cardiovascular Sciences within the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. Marino Pagan's group is part of SIDB/CDBS; Angus Chadwick is in the School of Informatics and associated with IANC. The project connects experimental animal behaviour with computational neuroscience, dynamical systems and AI. EASTBIO funding is four years, while the generic neuroscience course page lists 36 months of research plus a 12-month submission period. Confirm how the registration and training route fits the award.

Eligibility and application

EASTBIO normally requires a relevant UK 2:1 equivalent. A master's is not mandatory; other qualifications or significant professional experience may be considered. The advert requires no prior animal experience and specifies neither a programming language nor existing LLM expertise. The generic neuroscience route lists IELTS 6.5 overall and 6.0 in each component, excluding One Skill Retake; verify the requirement for this registration route. Application materials include the EASTBIO form, transcripts, an EDI response ID and two template references. Extra CVs are disregarded, referees cannot be project supervisors, and each applicant may choose only one EASTBIO project. See the official EASTBIO application guidance.

The stated deadline is 16 November 2026; current acceptance status, cutoff time and time zone are unverified. Entry is expected in October 2027, with interviews expected in the week of 8 March 2027. The advert concatenates two application email addresses into an invalid string. It separately names INCR.PostgraduateRecruitment@ed.ac.uk for references, but the valid application-form destination must be confirmed with the host.

Funding and points to confirm

This is a four-year EASTBIO/BBSRC competition open to applicants worldwide. Successful international awardees may receive an overseas fee-gap waiver. The available project materials state a 30% cap on international awards but do not identify its denominator or scope (for example, whether it is calculated across the EASTBIO network, one intake or this project). It cannot be read as a project-specific allocation or used to estimate an individual's chance of an award. The individual award and 2027/28 stipend are unconfirmed. The 2026/27 UKRI stipend benchmark is £21,805 per year, not a confirmed project rate; visa and IHS costs are excluded. Before applying, confirm the current slot, same-animal cross-task records, the implementation and validation of the LLM search, animal and hardware support, supervisory roles and a feasible four-year thesis plan.

Research and application brief

Report generated: . This date does not confirm that recruitment remains open.

Information updated: . Recheck the original notice before applying.

Show report contents

Edinburgh PhD in Neuroscience: Testing Shared Computations Across Behavioural Tasks

Research focus and applicant fit

Do an individual's learning, flexibility, perception and social behaviour reflect separate skills or a small set of shared computations? This four-year EASTBIO project asks that question through repeated measurements in the same rats and interpretable cognitive models. Rich records are useful only if the same individuals complete comparable tasks; many trials do not replace independent animals.

Marino Pagan and Angus Chadwick combine experimental and computational neuroscience. The stated deadline is 16 November 2026 for October 2027 entry, and applicants may be worldwide. Current acceptance status, cutoff time and time zone are unverified. Confirm the exact slot, first-year dataset and submission address before using the network's single application. EastBio 2027 recruitment EastBio how to apply Marino Pagan current institute role Pagan lab research and infrastructure Angus Chadwick current official academic page

Research work and unresolved problem

Most learning studies measure one task in different animals. This project instead advertises a same-rat battery: accumulating noisy sensory evidence, switching between opposite rules on a cue, pure perceptual discrimination, and social interaction. A fully automated, high-throughput platform would run training continuously and in parallel, giving each animal very many trials. The advertised hundreds of thousands are a project-scale aspiration/resource claim; verify achieved records and completion across all domains rather than treating trial count as independent animal sample size. Pagan lab research and infrastructure Pagan etal2024 online2025 Nature flexible decisions

The proposed AI approach places LLMs inside evolutionary search. Candidate cognitive models are short programs fitted to an individual's choices, assessed on future-behaviour prediction and iteratively modified. The central test is whether parameters learned in one task predict the same animal's other behaviours, yielding transferable latent dimensions or a cognitive fingerprint. Readable code can help interpretation but does not establish unique psychological mechanisms. This particular lab method is advertised; an independently published exact implementation was not located. Pagan publication record Chadwick publication record Miller2025 cognitive model discovery seminar

Training spans automated behavioural hardware/design, machine vision and pose tracking, reinforcement learning, recurrent networks, large-scale analysis and LLM-assisted discovery. The scientific challenge is separating common computations from task order, learning stage, motivation, measurement reliability and model flexibility. Ask about cross-task coverage, missing animals, held-out evaluation, parameter stability, simpler alternatives and computational costs. These are applicant evaluation questions, not a new experimental protocol. Existing lab electrophysiology, optogenetics and neurodevelopmental models are broader interests, not mandatory additional tasks in this advert. Pagan lab research and infrastructure Chadwick neural computation research Pagan etal2024 online2025 Nature flexible decisions Pellegrino Cayco Gajic Chadwick2023 low tensor rank Pellegrino Chadwick2025 dynamic warping RNNs

School, subject and doctoral training

Edinburgh awards the degree, with the advertised host the School of Neurological and Cardiovascular Sciences, CMVM. Pagan's group belongs to SIDB and CDBS; Chadwick is in IANC, School of Informatics. This offers a specific bridge between demanding animal behaviour and dynamical-systems/AI theory, rather than an unspecified multidisciplinary label. Pagan's lab lists 1 George Square and Chadwick Informatics Forum; the generic degree page's BioQuarter label should not be taken as this project's daily laboratory address. Confirm registration and travel/supervision arrangements. Edinburgh Neuroscience research degree 2027 Marino Pagan current institute role Pagan lab research and infrastructure Angus Chadwick current official academic page Pagan lab address and contact Chadwick contact and location

QS 2027 ranks Edinburgh 35th overall, not this lab or subject. Independent neuroscience programme evidence describes supervision, guided reading, laboratory research, seminars and workshops. Its generic 36-month PhD plus 12-month submission period differs from the advertised four-year EASTBIO funding. EASTBIO's first two years emphasise interdisciplinary core training; later years prioritise research and optional development, with professional placement opportunities. Confirm local annual reviews, thesis/viva timing, animal-work training, computing and hardware support, and how placements fit a longitudinal battery. A current 2026/27 calendar is not a fixed 2027-cohort schedule. EastBio training overview EastBio professional placements Edinburgh Neuroscience research degree 2027 Edinburgh neuroscience community QS Edinburgh 2027

Supervisors and recent research evidence

Pagan is an SIDB Fellow/group leader, with computer/control engineering training, a Pennsylvania neuroscience PhD and Princeton postdoctoral work through 2023. His lab studies flexible decisions and individual variability using automated rat behaviour and modelling. Angus Chadwick is Lecturer in Computational Neuroscience and AI, developing mechanistic, statistical and normative accounts of neural computation. Neither is verified here as Professor. General supervision invitations and research grants do not establish the student's weekly mentoring or personal award; clarify experimental/computational responsibilities and everyday support. Marino Pagan current institute role Pagan lab research and infrastructure Angus Chadwick current official academic page Chadwick neural computation research Pagan official academic CV

The discussion below is limited to selected results, discussion and limitations sections from three recent papers. Pagan et al., Nature, online 28 November 2024, 2025 issue, identifies different mixtures of three dynamical components supporting equally good flexible decisions. Pagan co-designed experiments/automation, performed experiments with Tang, developed mathematics with Brody, analysed RNNs with Sussillo and cowrote; Brody supervised. Its main warning is that ordinary RNN training can favour only a corner of biologically compatible solutions. The line-attractor framework and single task do not yet prove a four-domain fingerprint; the 2022 preprint is the same study, not another publication. Pagan publication record Pagan etal2024 online2025 Nature flexible decisions

Pellegrino, Cayco-Gajic and Chadwick, NeurIPS 2023, fits low-tensor-rank learning dynamics to motor recordings and validates related RNN/mathematical results. Connectivity inference remains ill-posed; assumptions about inputs, unmeasured states and gradient-based learning matter. Chadwick and Cayco-Gajic are equal last authors; an individual task allocation was not located. Pellegrino and Chadwick, NeurIPS 2025, relates dynamic representational geometry to context-dependent decisions and working memory in RNNs. Geometry can be shared by different architectures, and noise was treated under fixed realisations. Chadwick is the second of two authors, without a located individual contribution statement. These establish modelling expertise, not the advertised LLM search's validity. Pellegrino Cayco Gajic Chadwick2023 low tensor rank Pellegrino Chadwick2025 dynamic warping RNNs

An independent 2025 Miller seminar describes CogFunSearch, LLM-guided evolution of short cognitive programs, showing wider activity in automatic model discovery. It is a seminar abstract, not these supervisors' paper or proof of method ownership. Simons separately documents Pagan-lab work translating rat flexibility tasks into a human online-game project; that is a distinct undergraduate opportunity and illustrates a translational gap rather than adding human clinical recruitment to this PhD. Miller2025 cognitive model discovery seminar Simons SURFiN Edinburgh cognitive flexibility lab context

Funding and living costs

EASTBIO accepts worldwide applications; successful international candidates receive an international tuition top-up waiver. Available materials state a 30% cap on international awards but do not specify its denominator or scope; it therefore cannot establish an EASTBIO-wide rate or a project-specific allocation, or be used to estimate an individual's chance of an award. £21,805 annually is the 2026/27 UKRI benchmark, not an established 2027/28 personal stipend. Visa and IHS are excluded, and research funds are not take-home income. Confirm four-year coverage, computing/model-service costs, animal/hardware support and any placement travel budget in the award. EastBio 2027 recruitment EastBio international eligibility FAQ UKRI 2026/27 minimum rates

Edinburgh's 2026/27 single-postgraduate estimate is £1,542/month or £18,504/year, including £978/month housing/utilities, food/other purchases, phone, leisure and bus travel. Comparing same-year benchmark figures leaves £3,301 before immigration, moving/deposits and additional study expenses. This dated comparison is not a savings guarantee or 2027 rent quote, and rent must not be counted twice. Edinburgh postgraduate living costs 2026/27

Applicant fit and preparation

The advert explicitly says previous animal experience is not required. It welcomes quantitatively minded applicants from computing, physics, engineering or psychology, and experimentalists seeking computational depth. EASTBIO normally requires a relevant 2:1 equivalent, without a mandatory master's; other qualifications or significant professional experience may be considered. The generic neuroscience route's IELTS 6.5 overall/6.0 each, no One Skill Retake must be checked against actual registration. No specific programming language or pre-existing LLM expertise is imposed. EastBio how to apply EastBio international eligibility FAQ Edinburgh Neuroscience research degree 2027 Angus Chadwick current official academic page

Useful evidence would show a personal contribution to reproducible analysis, a model's predictive limitations or a hardware/behaviour project.

Career and research-training considerations

Skills could support computational neuroscience, scientific ML and behavioural research; programme placements, lab mentoring and conference outputs indicate opportunities, not employment rates. Applicants wanting exclusively dry analysis should clarify how much hands-on animal and hardware work is expected. EastBio professional placements Edinburgh Neuroscience research degree 2027 Pagan official academic CV Simons SURFiN Edinburgh cognitive flexibility lab context

Assess recording depth separately from same-animal coverage. Missing individuals or different task order can mix selection, learning stage or motivation with a common parameter. Good prediction and a convincing cognitive explanation are related but distinct goals: clarify the existing records, held-out prediction, simple alternatives and cross-task parameter stability. These points explain the project's interpretation challenge; they are not an additional protocol.

Next actions and questions

Contact mpagan@ed.ac.uk and angus.chadwick@ed.ac.uk to confirm availability, existing task coverage, search-method documentation and supervision. The collected advert concatenates INCR.PostgraduateRecruitment@ed.ac.ukINCR.Postgraduate@ed.ac.uk; its reference paragraph separately gives the first address. Ask the host for the correct submission address and cutoff. Official requirements are the EASTBIO form, EDI response ID, transcripts/originals with official English translations, and two template references by 16 November; extra CVs are disregarded and only one project may be chosen across the network. Referees may be academic or professional but must not be the project supervisors. Interviews are expected in the week of 8 March 2027, including a previous-research presentation. Before accepting, confirm funding, training, resources, usable datasets and a feasible four-year progression plan. EastBio how to apply EastBio international eligibility FAQ EastBio selection process Pagan lab address and contact Chadwick contact and location

Evidence and sources

Project, lab and supervisor information reflects 23 October 2026; common EASTBIO, course and cost facts reflect 22 October. No separate exact-title host page or current slot has been confirmed. The advert concatenates two application addresses, while reference instructions separately name INCR.PostgraduateRecruitment@ed.ac.uk; confirm the form recipient and cutoff with the host. The three paper discussions rely on selected results, discussion and limitations sections. The Miller source is a one-page seminar abstract.

Publication and seminar records

  • Pagan et al.: Nature, online 28 November 2024; volume 639, pages 421–429 in 2025. Pagan is first/corresponding author; the text above retains specific shared contributions. The 2022 preprint is the same study.
  • Pellegrino, Cayco-Gajic and Chadwick: NeurIPS 2023, low-tensor-rank learning dynamics; equal-last authorship does not establish individual task allocation.
  • Pellegrino and Chadwick: NeurIPS 2025, dynamic representational geometry in RNNs; Chadwick is second of two authors, with individual task allocation unknown.
  • Kevin J. Miller: university seminar abstract, 27 February 2025, on CogFunSearch/LLM-guided cognitive model discovery. This one-page abstract is not a paper by either supervisor or evidence of their method ownership.

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