hello, I’m diksha gupta!

I am a researcher interested in understanding how intelligent behavior emerges from the coordinated activity of networks of neurons. My research aims at uncovering the representations, architectures, and dynamics that are crucial for fundamental cognitive computations, using a combination of computational and experimental approaches.

I am currently a senior research fellow at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in University College London with the Behrens and Mrsic-Flogel labs. Here, I am studying the principles that allow brains to draw upon past bits of knowledge and compose them together to solve novel, challenging tasks (also called compositional generalization). Previously, during my PhD with Carlos Brody at Princeton University, I studied how recurrently connected networks in the brain accumulate information from noisy evidence, in order to make well-informed decisions.

In my research, I like to move between statistical, dynamical, and neural network models to scrutinize both behavior and underlying neural activity, adopting a normative lens whenever possible. For empirical data, I primarily rely on neural recordings and causal experiments in rodents while they play carefully crafted structured games.