Laura Edmondson

Laura Edmondson

PhD

University of Sheffield

Biography

I am currently a research associate in the Active Touch Lab at The University of Sheffield. I work with Dr Hannes Saal on modelling cortical somatotopic maps of the hand representation. My research focuses on modelling somatosensory cortex using dimensionality reduction techniques and self-organising models. I am interested in the mechanisms which determine the topography and magnification of the hand seen in the primary somatosensory cortex of both humans and non-human primates.

Interests

  • Computational Neuroscience
  • Somatosensation
  • Tactile perception
  • Neural coding

Education

  • PhD Psychology (Computational Neuroscience), 2022

    University of Sheffield

  • MSc Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience, 2017

    University of Sheffield

  • BSc(Hons) Psychology, 2014

    University of Manchester, UK

Skills

Python

Statistics

Git

Neuroscience

matlab

Matlab

Recent Publications

Malleability of the cortical hand map following a finger nerve block

Electrophysiological studies in monkeys show that finger amputation triggers local remapping within the deprived primary somatosensory …
PDF

Expansion and contraction of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks

Topographic sensory representations often do not scale proportionally to the size of their input regions, with some expanded and others …
PDF

Nonlinear scaling of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks

In many sensory systems, information transmission is constrained by a bottleneck, where the number of output neurons is vastly smaller …
PDF
Nonlinear scaling of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks

Projects

*
All Deep Learning Neuroscience ML Reproducibility

[ML Reproducibility Challenge 2020] Temporal Spike Sequence Learning via Backpropagation for Deep Spiking Neural Networks

Reproduction of NeurIPS 2020 paper result
PDF Code
[ML Reproducibility Challenge 2020] Temporal Spike Sequence Learning via Backpropagation for Deep Spiking Neural Networks

Neuromatch Academy: Comparing representations in early visual hierarchy with a convolutional deep neural network

Team project for Neuromatch Academy summer school.
Code Slides
Neuromatch Academy: Comparing representations in early visual hierarchy with a convolutional deep neural network

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Research Associate

University of Sheffield

Jun 2022 – Present Sheffield, UK
 
 
 
 
 

Teaching Fellow

University of Sheffield

Oct 2017 – Oct 2021 Sheffield, UK
Leading and assisting in teaching for BSc Psychology modules. Marking assessments and end of module examinations.
 
 
 
 
 

International Office Assistant

University of Manchester

Sep 2015 – Sep 2016 Manchester, UK
 
 
 
 
 

Admissions & external affairs intern, School of Computer Science

University of Manchester

Sep 2014 – Sep 2015 Manchester, UK

Teaching

University of Sheffield- Department of Psychology

Department of Psychology

  • Psychological Research Methodology I - Teaching Assistant (2019-2020)

  • Research supervision - Co-supervisor for BSc & MSc projects (2018-2020)

  • Mathematical Modelling and Research Skills - Guest Lecturer (2019, 2021)

  • Psychological research methods - Teaching Assistant (2018-2019)

  • Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology - Teaching Assistant (2018)

  • Essential Social Psychology - Teaching Assistant (2018)

  • Methods and reasoning for Psychologists - Teaching Assistant (2017-18)

CodeFirstGirls

CodeFirstGirls

  • Introduction to Python programming - Course leader (Spring 2019)
  • Advanced web development with Python - Teaching Assistant (2018)
    Course materials available here

Contact

  • l.r.edmondson(at)sheffield.ac.uk
  • DM Me