Sebastian Dohnány

I am interested in the way we make sense of the world, in the brain and through language. To this end, my DPhil research develops tools to study information processing in the brain and uses naturalistic narratives such as movies and audiobooks to link neural activity to the semantic and schematic structure of language, quantified using large language models. I investigate this in the context of psychosis, where belief updating and knowledge organisation are altered, with the aim of clarifying underlying mechanisms of clinical relevance. Because information in the brain and language gains meaning only through subjective lived experience, I am also excited about novel ways to study phenomenology with LLMs and in how advances in conversational AI may influence human belief formation.

My DPhil is supervised by Dr Matthew Nour, Dr Robert McCutcheon, Prof. Morten Kringelbach and Dr Pedro Mediano (Imperial College London). I split my time between the Psychosis Neurobiology & Treatment Group and Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing. I also serve on the executive board of the Mediterranean Society for Consciousness Science (MESEC) and as Charity Representative of Merton College MCR.