I completed my PhD in Computational Neuroscience in September 2023, and I am currently a postdoc at the Bernstein Center Freiburg, Germany, working with Christian Leibold. I develop deep reinforcement learning agents with brain-inspired architectures in simulated realistic environments to test neuroscience theories and to make deep RL more efficient. I am interested in collaborations and positions in the field of deep reinforcement learning and/or theoretical (systems) neuroscience.

some keywords to describe my interests:

prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, working memory, sparsity, dynamical system, system identification, eliminative materialism

reservoir computing, world model

--------and it's obsolete below: 🤫

My primary research interest is centered on uncovering the fundamental principles of intelligence in biological organisms. I approach this by formally describing and abstracting the physiological observations then analogizing them with engineered intelligent systems. In other words, I am inspired deeply by physics, control science and machine learning.

Currently I am very interested in taking neuroscience insights into engineering practice.

Computational and systems neuroscience

• Lin, X.-X., Yiu, Y.-H., Leibold, C. (2026). Emergence of Spatial Representation in an Actor-Critic Agent with Hippocampus-Inspired Sequence Generator. ICLR.
• Lin, X.-X., Nieder, A., Jacob, S.N.(2023). The neuronal implementation of representational geometry in primate prefrontal cortex. Science Advances.
• Eisenkolb, V. M., Held, L. M., Utzschmid, A., Lin, X.-X., Krieg, S. M., Meyer, B., ... & Jacob, S. N. (2023). Human acute microelectrode array recordings with broad cortical access, single-unit resolution and parallel behavioral monitoring. Cell Reports.

Cognitive neuroscience

• Bao, Y., Pöppel, E., Wang, L., Lin, X., Yang, T., Avram, M., ... Vedder, A. (2015). Synchronization as a biological, psychological and social mechanism to create common time: a theoretical frame and a single case study. PsyCh Journal, 4(4), 243-254.
• Bao, Y., Yang, T., Lin, X., & Pöppel, E. (2016). Donders revisited: Discrete or continuous temporal processing underlying reaction time distributions? PsyCh Journal, 5(3), 177-179.
• Wang, L., Bao, Y., Zhang, J., Lin, X., Yang, L., Pöppel, E., & Zhou, B. (2016). Scanning the world in three seconds: Mismatch negativity as an indicator of temporal segmentation. PsyCh Journal, 5(3), 170-176.
• Wang, L., Lin, X., Zhou, B., Pöppel, E., & Bao, Y. (2015). Subjective present: a window of temporal integration indexed by mismatch negativity. Cognitive Processing, 16(1), 131-135.
• Wang, L., Lin, X., Zhou, B., Pöppel, E., & Bao, Y. (2016). Rubberband effect in temporal control of mismatch negativity. Frontiers in Psychology, 7.

Neural aesthetics

• Bao, Y., Yang, T., Zhang, J., Zhang, J., Lin, X., Paolini, M., ... & Silveira, S. (2017). The "third abstraction" of the Chinese artist LaoZhu: Neural and behavioral indicators of aesthetic appreciation. PsyCh Journal, 6(2), 110-119.
• Bao, Y., Yang, T., Lin, X., Fang, Y., Wang, Y., Pöppel, E., & Lei, Q. (2016). Aesthetic Preferences for Eastern and Western Traditional Visual Art: Identity Matters. Frontiers in Psychology, 7.