Media.
May 2020. A news article in Science about our recent garter snake paper. Also one in National Geographic, on the Mother Nature Network, in the Smithsonian Magazine, in Ha'aretz (an Israeli daily newspaper; in Hebrew), and in La Republica (Italian daily newspaper; in Italian).
October 2019. Noam's public lecture in Waterloo, as part of the RCIScience series, is advertised here.
July 2019. A video by ElevenX - who provided the sensors for our ongoing research at evolv1 - including interviews with Manuel Riemer, Simon Coulombe, and Noam. Here.
March 2019. Noam was part of a panel on TVO's "The Agenda", in an episode on "What animals think and feel". Watch it here.
February 2017. Video of a public lecture featuring recent Banting Discovery Award winners, including Noam, is here (Noam's talk starts at 41:47).
August 2016. An article on the Laurier website highlighting our research [here].
July 2016. Our Banting Research Foundation Discovery Award is explained here.
November 2015. An article in ALN (now called Laboratory Equipment) about zebrafish welfare with a (short) contribution by Noam [here] and a mini-profile [here].
July 2015. Noam dicusses our research on Dave Brodbeck's "Spit and Twitches: The Animal Cognition Podcast". Here (Episode 4).
October 2019. Noam's public lecture in Waterloo, as part of the RCIScience series, is advertised here.
July 2019. A video by ElevenX - who provided the sensors for our ongoing research at evolv1 - including interviews with Manuel Riemer, Simon Coulombe, and Noam. Here.
March 2019. Noam was part of a panel on TVO's "The Agenda", in an episode on "What animals think and feel". Watch it here.
February 2017. Video of a public lecture featuring recent Banting Discovery Award winners, including Noam, is here (Noam's talk starts at 41:47).
August 2016. An article on the Laurier website highlighting our research [here].
July 2016. Our Banting Research Foundation Discovery Award is explained here.
November 2015. An article in ALN (now called Laboratory Equipment) about zebrafish welfare with a (short) contribution by Noam [here] and a mini-profile [here].
July 2015. Noam dicusses our research on Dave Brodbeck's "Spit and Twitches: The Animal Cognition Podcast". Here (Episode 4).
EDI statement.
As members of the Collective Cognition Lab at Laurier, we commit to fostering a culture of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). To us, this means creating a workplace environment where all members feel valued, respected, supported, and given space to voice their opinions. We also strongly support Laurier’s EDI action plan and commitment to inclusion in research. We hope that the ethic reflected in this document will not only be reflected in our attitudes and behaviours as members of the academic community at Laurier and beyond, but also be something that we will carry with us in our future private and professional lives.
We are making efforts to respond to the systemic biases and barriers that have affected the full participation of historically underrepresented groups in STEM, and especially in neuroscience. This document reflects our commitment to recruiting, including, and supporting underrepresented groups, because we believe including people of different experiences, cultures, and knowledge results in a more vibrant and robust research community. Many of us are fortunate enough not to feel the full effects and extent of discrimination, and are therefore in a position to take action against it, helping people who have previously or currently experience discrimination in STEM.
We believe that:
We are making efforts to respond to the systemic biases and barriers that have affected the full participation of historically underrepresented groups in STEM, and especially in neuroscience. This document reflects our commitment to recruiting, including, and supporting underrepresented groups, because we believe including people of different experiences, cultures, and knowledge results in a more vibrant and robust research community. Many of us are fortunate enough not to feel the full effects and extent of discrimination, and are therefore in a position to take action against it, helping people who have previously or currently experience discrimination in STEM.
We believe that:
- Incorporating diversity in research benefits everyone, improves problem-solving, helps check biases, and leads to more comprehensive and robust research findings.
- A strong EDI-focused environment allows all lab members to feel respected, valued, and supported, and therefore comfortable sharing their perspectives and ideas. A wider variety of perspectives and ideas will result in more well-rounded and stronger research projects, and potentially novel solutions to problems.
- Use language that is inclusive and respectful when speaking with other lab members and in all academic settings.
- Commit to self-learning in regards to EDI in academia, inclusive language, and how to be an ally to underrepresented groups in STEM. We encourage all lab members to participate in the workshops and online modules offered by Laurier.
- Remain open-minded and judgement-free when listening to other lab members’ perspectives, questions, and comments.
- Be aware of and acknowledge their own personal privilege and the effects it has in social dynamics within the academic community.
- Ensure all lab members are given space and opportunity to be heard and feel comfortable sharing their perspectives.
- Commit to active self-reflection and group accountability as an ongoing process.
prospective students.
There are opportunities in the lab for undergraduates conducting a research thesis or as research assistants. We have zebrafish and guppies in the lab at the moment but studying other species of (small) freshwater fish is possible. We also have Western hognose snakes and corn snakes. I am particularly interested in collective behavior but would be willing to supervise any reasonable project on animal cognition. Projects studying how social learning operates using fish or snakes are also interesting to me. I am also happy to supervise theoretical (simulation) projects on various aspects of collective behavior (foraging, learning, evolution of group behavior). Please contact me to discuss if you are interested in joining the lab.
I am not currently accepting any new graduate students.
I am not currently accepting any new graduate students.
Teaching and playing.
This year (2022/23) I am teaching PS261 (introduction to learning), PS263 (behavioural neuroscience), and PS330M (automated methods in psychology).
In addition to classroom teaching, I am a big believer in the gamification of learning. In aid of this, I have created several online tools designed to help students engage with material related to what I most often teach. Links and brief descriptions below. Note that most of these things are evolving and may still contain a few bugs. Each website contains one or more help files that explain what they do and how to use them in much more detail than is given here.
Rescorla-Wagner Simulator: This is a simulator that allows you to design a learning experiment and see what the famous Rescorla-Wagner model predicts will happen in it. You can have multiple groups, training phases, and tests. The website generates graphs of associative strengths and bar charts of test results. You can save and load experiments. There are two versions of this site. One is a simplified version of the model (excluding β, for example) which I find useful for introductory classes. The second instantiates the full model (different values of βup and βdown, multiple reinforcers, varying reward contingencies...). Pre-loaded examples demonstrate blocking, overshadowing, the feature-positive effect (simple version), and relative validity (full version).
Build Your Own Brain (BYOB): This is a website that lets you build a simple neural network and see what it does. Networks can contain neurons, sensors (specialized neurons like rods, cones, or auditory hair cells), and muscles. You can add external stimuli that activate the sensors (such as lights and sounds) or drugs (that affect synapses) and label the parts of your network. Networks can then be 'run' to see how patterns of activation move through them. Networks can be saved and loaded and summarized in several ways. There are several pre-loaded examples: a reflex arc, a pacemaker, and a simple walking circuit.
Be the Pigeon: This is a game inspired by an in-class experiment that John Pearce used to conduct, in which he had his students guess at the rule in an operant experiment and then compared their results to pigeons that had run the same experiment. This game presents a task to which you are not given the rules. The players' task is to play as well as possible, while also trying to figure out the rules governing the game - exactly the task faced by a pigeon in an operant box. The game generates a randomized rule for each new player. For various reasons, access to the game is limited to current students in my PS261 class. But please contact me if you want more information or a copy of the code for your own class.
links.
CODE.
A lot of our research involves the automated measurement of animal behavior. The more automated the better. To do this, we use a variety of programs that track animals in videos, control experiments, or clean up and analyze data. Some of the programs we use are available online. Many of them are written in-house and, since they might be useful to other people, I've collected them here for download, with brief explanations.