Barbara Francik
Barbara graduated from the University of Oxford in 2024 with a Master’s in Biology. She completed her Master’s project with the Oxford Navigation (OxNav) group. She investigated the information content of acoustic begging calls in Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) chicks, and how parents modulate their chick provisioning behaviour in response to these calls.
Barbara joined the Stephenson-Jones lab in November 2024. Her work focuses on reinforcement learning without reward, tracking dopamine fluctuations during spontaneous non-goal orientated behaviour in free-moving mice. Specifically, she will be looking at action prediction error (APE) signalling, a potential value-free teaching signal. She will be using a combination of fibre photometry and Motion Sequencing (MoSeq) to help understand the nature and role of APE signals.