Peter Murphy

Dr. Murphy investigates how brains encode information about the world (sensory perception), maintain that information over time (short-term or ‘working’ memory), and prioritize or combine it in ways that allow us to make good decisions (decision-making, cognitive control, attention). He also studies how these cognitive functions might be altered in aging and psychiatric populations. This work makes use of several methods and approaches: carefully designed paradigms for psychophysical interrogation of human task performance; measurement of brain activity using non-invasive methods (EEG, fMRI, MEG); and monitoring changes in arousal by measuring pupil size. A theme common to much of Dr. Murphy’s work is the use of computational models to link neural and behavioural observations and arrive at deeper insights about cognitive and neural mechanisms. This can involve using normative models to assess (departures from) optimal strategies; fitting algorithmic cognitive models to decompose observed behaviour into latent component processes; and interrogating hand-tuned and/or trained neural networks to understand neural implementation.