Position Title
Professor
About
Dr. O’Reilly is Professor of Psychology, Computer Science, and the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California Davis. He has authored over 70 journal articles and an influential textbook on computational cognitive neuroscience. His work focuses on biologically-based computational models of learning mechanisms in different brain areas, including hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia, and posterior visual cortex. He has received significant funding from ONR, NIH, NSF, IARPA, and DARPA. He is a primary author of the Emergent neural network simulation environment. O’Reilly completed a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and was awarded an A.B. degree with highest honors in Psychology from Harvard University.
Research Focus
I develop computational and formal models of the biological bases of cognition (computational cognitive neuroscience), focusing on specialization of function in and interactions between hippocampus, prefrontal cortex/basal ganglia, and posterior neocortex in learning, memory, attention, and controlled processing. I test predictions from these models using a range of behavioral and other experimental techniques.
Publications
OReillyHazyHerd16 O'Reilly, R.C., Hazy, T.E. & Herd, S.A. (2016). The Leabra Cognitive Architecture: How to Play 20 Principles with Nature and Win!. S. Chipman (Ed) Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OReilly06 OReilly, R.C. (2006). Biologically Based Computational Models of High-Level Cognition. Science, 314, 91-94.
OReillyWyatteRohrlich17 O'Reilly, R.C., Wyatte, D., and Rohrlich, J. (2017/submitted). Deep Predictive Learning: A Comprehensive Model of Three Visual Streams. Preprint avail at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.04654
OReillyBhattacharyyaHowardEtAl14 O'Reilly, R.C., Bhattacharyya, R., Howard, M.D. & Ketz, N. (2014). Complementary Learning Systems. Cognitive Science, 38,1229-1248.
Teaching
Note: these are old links to CU Boulder courses until new ones at Davis are updated.
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience -- uses my Free Online Textbook