I'm interested in understanding the core computations that underly perception, decision-making and cognitive control in humans and mammals in general. Can we derive a set of general rules explaining how sensory information is transformed into the representation of perceived objects and how these percepts guide decisions?

I address these questions using a combination of theory, psychophysics and collaboration with rodent and primate experimental labs.

Moreover, because inferring the structure of cognition from complex behavioral and neural data requires carefully crafted statistical analyses, I also develop tools from advanced statistics and machine learning that can be directly applied by cognitive neuroscientists. I am a proud co-founder and co-organizer of the Barcelona summer school for Advanced Modelling of Behavior (BAMB!, www.bambschool.org).

perception; decision-making; bayesian inference; modelling of behavior; latent variable models

• Alexandre Hyafil, Jaime de la Rocha, Cristina Pericas, Leor N. Katz, Alexander C. Huk, Jonathan W. Pillow. Temporal integration is a robust feature of perceptual decisions. eLife 12, e84045
• Hernández-Navarro, L., Hermoso-Mendizabal, A., Duque, D., de la Rocha, J.*, & Hyafil, A.* (2021). Proactive and reactive accumulation-to-bound processes compete during perceptual decisions. Nature Communications, 12(1), 7148. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27302-8 ) (*equal contributions) [12 citations]
• Hermoso-Mendizabal* A, Hyafil A*, Rueda-Orozco PE, Jaramillo S, Robbe D, & Rocha J de la. (2020). Response outcomes gate the impact of expectations on perceptual decisions. Nature Communications, 11(1), 1057. https://doi.org/10.1101/433409 (2020) (*equal contrib.) [51 citations]
• Schustek, P.*, Hyafil, A.*, & Moreno-Bote, R. (2019). Human confidence judgments reflect reliability-based hierarchical integration of contextual information. Nature Communications, 10: 1-15 (*equal contributions) [16 citations]
• Hyafil, A., Fontolan, L., Kabdebon, C., Gutkin, B. S., and Giraud, A. (2015). Speech encoding by coupled cortical theta and gamma oscillations. Elife 4, 1–23. [180 citations]
• Hyafil, A., Giraud, A.-L., Fontolan, L., and Gutkin, B. S. Neural cross-frequency coupling: connecting architectures, mechanisms and functions. Trends in Neuroscience DOI:10.1016/j.tins.2015.09.001 [363 citations]
• Hyafil*, A., Summerfield, C*., and Koechlin, E. (2009). Two mechanisms for task switching in the prefrontal cortex. J. Neurosci. 29, 5135–42. [222 citations] (*equal contributions)
• Koechlin, E., and Hyafil, A. (2007). Anterior prefrontal function and the limits of human decision-making. Science 318, 594–8. [891 citations]
• Baumard N, Huillery E, Hyafil A, & Safra L. (2022) The Cultural Evolution of Love in Literary History. Nature Human Behavior 6 (4), 506-522.