Ben Seymour

BSc MB ChB PhD MRCP FRSA

Professor of Clinical Neuroscience

Wellcome Senior Fellow
Consultant Neurologist
Turing Fellow

Pain and aversive learning, with a focus on computational neuroscience and neurotechnology

Pain and aversive learning

My lab addresses the computational and systems neuroscience of pain. This research is part theoretical: building realistic models of neuronal information processes to understand processes of pain perception and behaviour, and part experimental: testing these theories using a range of experimental methodologies, especially fMRI. My research aims to develop new technology-based therapies for treating pain in clinical populations.

I am a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow at Oxford University, working jointly at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging and the Oxford Institute for Biomedical Engineering; and a visiting researcher at ATR labs (Kyoto). I am a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute with an interest in safe AI control systems. I am also an honorary consultant neurologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust with an interest in behavioural homeostasis and sleep, pain and fatigue neurology.

Contact information

Research groups

Ben Seymour

Pain and aversive learning

Key publications

Computational and neural mechanisms of statistical pain learning.

Pain Control by Co-adaptive Learning in a Brain-Machine Interface

Pain: A Precision Signal for Reinforcement Learning and Control.

The control of tonic pain by active relief learning

Fear reduction without fear through reinforcement of neural activity that bypasses conscious exposure

Recent publications

Homeostasis after injury: How intertwined inference and control underpin post-injury pain and behaviour

Neural Associative Skill Memories for Safer Robotics and Modeling Human Sensorimotor Repertoires

Wirelessly transmitted subthalamic nucleus signals decode endogenous pain levels in Parkinson's disease patients.

Forward and reverse engineering the pain system: from computational neuroscience to neuro-engineering

Composing the value signal for dopamine-mediated learning

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Contact information

Research groups

Ben Seymour

Pain and aversive learning

Key publications

Recent publications