Rate My Professor Rebecca Lawson

Professor Rebecca Lawson is Professor of Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. She obtained a first-class honours degree in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Glasgow (2002-2006) and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge (2006-2010), supervised by the late Dr. Andrew Calder, investigating adaptive gain control mechanisms and top-down processing in social cognition. Lawson serves as Senior Affiliated Scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Royal Society Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Fellow in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Clare College, Bye-Fellow at Peterhouse College, and Deputy Head of School for Research Strategy in the School of the Biological Sciences. As Principal Investigator of the Prediction and Learning Lab, her research uses computational models, pharmacology, and brain imaging to examine how humans learn to build adaptive expectations about the world, other people, and themselves. This work investigates the neural realization of predictions, their development in infants, and their contributions to individual differences in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric conditions, including autism, anxiety, and depression.

Her research interests encompass perception and decision-making, pharmacology, computational neuroscience, neuropsychiatric disorders, neuroimaging, neurodevelopment, and eye-tracking. Lawson has received major awards such as the BNPA Lishmann Prize, SOBP Early Career Investigator Award, BAP Psychopharmacology Award, UCL Neuroscience Early Career Research Prize, Lister Institute Research Prize, and Autistica Future Research Leader. Key publications include LAWSON, R. P., Mathys, C., & Rees, G. (2017). Adults with autism overestimate the volatility of the sensory environment. Nature Neuroscience, 20, 1293–1299; LAWSON, R. P. et al. (2016). Disrupted habenula function in major depressive disorder. Molecular Psychiatry, 22, 202–208; LAWSON, R. P. et al. (2014). The habenula encodes negative motivational value associated with primary punishment in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(32), 11858-11863; LAWSON, R. P. et al. (2015). A striking reduction of loudness adaptation in autism. Nature Scientific Reports, 5, 16157; and LAWSON, R. P., Friston, K. J., & Rees, G. (2015). A more precise look at 'context' in autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(38), E5226. She supervises PhD students.