Eric Leonardis, MS, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow - Talmo Pereira Lab and Tom Albright Lab - Salk Institute for Biological Studies

PhD - Andrea Chiba Lab - Cognitive Science - UC San Diego

Systems Neuroscience / Reinforcement Learning / Computational Ethology

Scientific Advisor for Film

hi

I research human and animal behavior using methods from systems and computational neuroscience. I am currently working with Talmo Pereira and Tom Albright on using deep neural networks for behavioral tracking in humans and mice with an emphasis on deep reinforcement learning. My current postdoc project is a behavioral study of museum viewer behavior at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) . I worked with Professor Andrea Chiba and Dr. Laleh Quinn on neuroscience experiments involving social behavior towards other conspecifics and interaction with robots. I have worked with and helped to manage interdisciplinary groups of students, research scientists, post-docs, and engineers to acquire robotic, neural, and behavioral data, then analyze that data using signal processing and dynamical systems methods. Check out my resume and CV for more details.

I serve as scientific advisor for the National Academy of Sciences Science and Entertainment Exchange to evaluate the science in film scripts.

I recently gave a talk "Body Horror and the Brain" with the Neurohumanities Network and Harvard Medical School. Check out my lecture below:

  • Leonardis, E. (2024) Body Horror and the Brain. Neurohumanities Network Event.

    • I was recently interviewed in WIRED about body horror and insular cortex. We discussed an HR Giger inspired survival body horror video game Scorn and its relationship to embodied cogntion and the neuroscience of disgust:

  • Farokhmanesh, M. (2023). What Creepy Video Game Sounds Do to Your Brain. WIRED.

    • Check out our paper about rodent behavioral and neural responses to robotic agents:

  • Leonardis, E.J., Breston, L., Lucero-Moore, R., Sena, L., Kohli, R., Schuster, L., Barton-Gluzman, L., Quinn, L.K., Wiles, J., & Chiba, A.A. (2022). Interactive Neurorobotics: Behavioral and Neural Dynamics of Agent Interactions. Frontiers in Psychology: Robots and Bionic Systems as Tools to Study Cognition: Theories, Paradigms, and Methodological Issues.

    • Our nonlinear dynamical systems article about estimating dynamic coupling in the brain is out in Scientific Reports!

  • Link to Breston, L., Leonardis, E. J., Quinn, L. K., Tolston, M., Wiles, J., & Chiba, A. A. (2021). Convergent cross sorting for estimating dynamic coupling. Scientific reports, 11(1), 1-10.

    • I actively educate popular audiences about the role of science and technology in society. I am a recurring guest at KPBS Cinema Junkie Podcast with Beth Accomando and events with the SD Natural History Museum speaking on science fiction and body horror films. I was a panelist at the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival at the world premiere of The Return, and discussed the science behind the science-fiction with the cast and crew.

    Check out this video of our rat-robot interaction project in collaboration with Janet Wiles' Complex and Intelligent Systems Lab at University of Queensland (Brisbane, AU):

  • Link to Heath, S., Ramirez, C., Arnold, J., Olsson, O., Taufatofua, J., Pounds, P., Wiles, J., Leonardis, E., Gygi, E., Leija, E., Quinn, L., Chiba, A. (2018) PiRat: An autonomous framework for studying social behavior in rats and robots. 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2018), Madrid, Spain.