Tim Lawn

Tim Lawn

Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Neuroimaging

Blog posts

2025

A Beginner’s Guide to REACT Analysis: Bridging the Gap from Neurotransmitters to Networks in fMRI

12 minute read

Published:

Functional MRI (fMRI) has revolutionized cognitive neuroscience, allowing us to map neural activity and connectivity non-invasively. However, fMRI has a fundamental limitation: the BOLD signal is blind to the cellular and molecular mechanisms that give rise to it (see [1] for review). When we see altered connectivity in a patient or after administering a drug, we’re left asking: which neurotransmitter systems are giving rise to this?

2021

How can a story of childhood abuse, an almond-shaped bit of brain, and mass-murder shed light on our intuitions of free will?

14 minute read

Published:

Are you free to do as you please? When you saw this blog post, did you choose to read it? Clearly you have clicked the link, but do you have a strong set of arguments as to why you did so? For most people, the decision to click the link will have been made largely subconsciously. “Huh, that might be interesting” is likely as far as you got. What about why it is interesting? Why is this more interesting than the other things you chose not to read today? Or less interesting than the thing you will choose to read instead when you give up a blog post so full of annoying rhetorical questions?

Evolved Discontent

6 minute read

Published:

Disclaimer: these are the written extension of a rambling series of conversations (which may or may not have happened alongside some yeasty beverages). As such, this is not well researched nor integrated into broader theories of evolutionary psychology.

Something weighing heavy on your mind? Measuring thoughts with a set of scales

8 minute read

Published:

Today, neuroscientists generally agree that mental processes are intimately associated with the function of the brain. However, this hasn’t always been the case. For example, Descartes’ famous distinction between res cogitans, the stuff of thought, and res extensa, the stuff of matter has persisted strongly over the 350+ years since his death. So what evidence has led to our modern understanding of the mind and brain? This is the brief story of the man who used a glorified kitchen scale to measure thoughts well over a hundred years ago in the first ever neuroimaging study.

2019

What can giving MDMA to octopi teach us about human social behaviour?

4 minute read

Published:

Despite the human and octopus lineages being separated by 500 million years of evolution, we still share some similarities in the ancient neurotransmitter systems that form a key part of the way our brains work. In this time octopi developed several extra legs and humans went on to dominate the globe using just two, and on the way, we discovered several substances which can profoundly alter our brains’ neurochemistry.