Dr. M. (Micha) Heilbron
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Programme group Brain and Cognition
Area of expertise: cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience and AI
Visiting address
- Nieuwe Achtergracht 129
Postal address
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Postbus 15915
1001 NK Amsterdam
Contact details
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About
I am an Assistant Professor of Cognitive AI at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), based at Amsterdam Brain and Cognition (ABC). I work at the intersection of cognitive (neuro)science and AI, primarily studying how brains and artificial systems understand language and make sense of the world. For more info, see my personal website.
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Publications
2026
- Heilbron, M., & de Lange, F. P. (2026). Higher-level spatial prediction in natural vision across mouse visual cortex. PLoS Computational Biology, 22(1), Article e1013136. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013136
- Noorman, S., Fahrenfort, J. J., Heilbron, M., Sergent, C., Zantvoord, J. B., van Gaal, S., & Stein, T. (2026). Effects of expectation, attention, and NMDA receptor blockade on feedforward and feedback processing. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 46(12), Article e0674252026. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0674-25.2026
- Schönmann, I., Szewczyk, J., de Lange, F. P., & Heilbron, M. (2026). Stimulus dependencies-rather than next-word prediction-can explain pre-onset brain encoding in naturalistic listening designs. eLife, 14. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.106543
- Thamma, A., & Heilbron, M. (2026). Human-like Fleeting Memory Improves Language Learning but Impairs Reading Time Prediction in Transformer Language Models. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 14, 877-892. https://doi.org/10.1162/TACL.a.688
- Vogelsang, D. A., & Heilbron, M. (2026). Representational magnitude as a geometric signature of image and word memorability. Journal of Memory and Language, 151, Article 104784. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2026.104784
2024
Fresen, A. J., Choenni, R., Heilbron, M., Zuidema, W., & de Heer Kloots, M. (2024). Language Models That Accurately Represent Syntactic Structure Exhibit Higher Representational Similarity To Brain Activity. In L. Samuelson, S. Frank, M. Toneva, A. Mackey, & E. Hazeltine (Eds.), 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2024): Dynamics of Cognition : Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 24-27 July 2024 (Vol. 2, pp. 675-683). (Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; Vol. 46). Cognitive Science Society. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1fp7m6nf [details]
2023
- Heilbron, M., van Haren, J., Hagoort, P., & de Lange, F. P. (2023). Lexical Processing Strongly Affects Reading Times But Not Skipping During Natural Reading. Open Mind, 7, 757-783. https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00099 [details]
2022
- Heilbron, M., Armeni, K., Schoffelen, J. M., Hagoort, P., & de Lange, F. P. (2022). A hierarchy of linguistic predictions during natural language comprehension. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32), Article e2201968119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201968119
- Kern, P., Heilbron, M., de Lange, F. P., & Spaak, E. (2022). Cortical activity during naturalistic music listening reflects short-range predictions based on long-term experience. eLife, 11, Article e80935. https://doi.org/10.7554/ELIFE.80935
- de Lange, F. P., Schmitt, L. M., & Heilbron, M. (2022). Reconstructing the predictive architecture of the mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(12), 1018-1019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.08.007
2020
- Heilbron, M., Richter, D., Ekman, M., Hagoort, P., & de Lange, F. P. (2020). Word contexts enhance the neural representation of individual letters in early visual cortex. Nature Communications, 11, Article 321. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13996-4
2019
- Heilbron, M., & Meyniel, F. (2019). Confidence resets reveal hierarchical adaptive learning in humans. PLoS Computational Biology, 15(4), Article e1006972. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006972
2018
- Heilbron, M., & Chait, M. (2018). Great Expectations: Is there Evidence for Predictive Coding in Auditory Cortex? Neuroscience, 389, 54-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2017.07.061
- de Lange, F. P., Heilbron, M., & Kok, P. (2018). How Do Expectations Shape Perception? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(9), 764-779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.06.002
2025
- van Noort, M., Korthals, L., de Heer Kloots, M. L. S., Aldegheri, G., & Heilbron, M. (2025). Compositional Meaning in Vision-Language Models and the Brain. Abstract from Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, Amsterdam, Netherlands. https://2025.ccneuro.org/abstract_pdf/Noort_2025_Compositional_Meaning_Vision-Language_Models_Brain.pdf
Prize / grant
- Heilbron, M. (2024). NWO VENI.
Others
- Scholte, S. (organiser), Heilbron, M. (organiser), Stevenson, C. (organiser), Müller, N. (organiser) & van Gerven, M. A. J. (participant) (20-12-2024). CCN-NL, Amsterdam (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
2022
- Richter, D., Heilbron, M. & Lange, F. (19-7-2022). Dampened sensory representations for expected input across the ventral visual stream. Radboud University. https://doi.org/10.34973/2jxe-d940
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Ancillary activities
No ancillary activities
Fresen, A. J., Choenni, R., Heilbron, M., Zuidema, W., & de Heer Kloots, M. (2024). Language Models That Accurately Represent Syntactic Structure Exhibit Higher Representational Similarity To Brain Activity. In L. Samuelson, S. Frank, M. Toneva, A. Mackey, & E. Hazeltine (Eds.), 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2024): Dynamics of Cognition : Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 24-27 July 2024 (Vol. 2, pp. 675-683). (Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; Vol. 46). Cognitive Science Society.