Peter Thestrup Waade
Switzerland
Postdoctoral Researcher
ETH Zürich
Neuroscience/Cognitive Science, Machine Learning/Technical AI, Interdisciplinary
Switzerland Postdoctoral Researcher ETH Zürich Neuroscience/Cognitive Science, Machine Learning/Technical AI, Interdisciplinary
Project
Do embodied neural cultures learn predictive world models through active inference?
Project Overview
This project investigates whether embodied biological neural cultures (DishBrain) exhibit evidence of predictive world modelling when engaged in closed-loop tasks. While prior work shows that neural cultures can adapt behaviour through stimulation and feedback (Kagan et al., 2022), it remains unclear whether this reflects simple reactive dynamics or structured inference about latent environmental states. Using the Cortical Cloud platform, we will design a minimal closed-loop task with hidden structure (e.g., changing stimulus–outcome contingencies) that requires prediction over time, and record both neural activity and behavioural outputs.
The core aim is to compare generative models, including an active inference model with latent states, against reactive or reinforcement-based baselines. These models will be fit to joint neural and behavioural data to test which framework best explains adaptation and responses to environmental change. By focusing on a tractable and falsifiable setting, the project asks whether DishBrain’s dynamics are better explained by structured predictive inference than by stimulus-response mappings alone, providing a minimal mechanistic test of world model formation in a living neural system.
Mentor
About the Scholar
Peter Thestrup Waade is a Danish/Norwegian computational cognitive scientist working in computational psychiatry. Specialising in cognitive modelling - often but not exclusively in Bayesian mind and predictive processing paradigms - he develops Julia software for this methodology, and applies it to investigate phenomena such as hallucinations, fatigue, and the effect of therapeutic interventions. As an interdisciplinary-hearted researcher, he also studies embodies social interaction - such as partner dancing - and applies phenomenological interview methods alongside third-person experimental methods. He speaks Chinese fluently, translates poetry, is a dancer and martial artist, and in general believes in relationality, clarity and curiosity as the foundations of both his work and personal life.
Why AISS?
"Joining the AISS program is an incredibly opportunity to work with a mentor and on a project I have been eager to connect with for a long time, and to connect with a group of competent and excited researchers from different fields. It is not so often that interdisciplinary collaboration is supported this clearly, nor that early-career work is supported both structurally and financially. And what a wonderful thing, that is also happens in connection with this year's CIFAR winter school - and is hosted by an organisation that I respect and admire."
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