Dr Paul Muhle-Karbe PhD

School of Psychology
Assistant Professor

Contact details

Email: p.muhle-karbe@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @PMuhleKarbe

Dr Muhle-Karbe is a computational cognitive neuroscientist with a broad interest in the building blocks of higher cognitive functions. His work combines behavioural experimentation with brain imaging and computational modelling to interrogate how the brain controls cognitive processing for adaptive learning, memory, and decision-making.

Qualifications

MSc (Hons) Cognitive Neuroscience

PhD Experimental Psychology

Biography

Dr Muhle-Karbe obtained a Diploma (MSc equivalent) in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Humboldt University of Berlin and a PhD in Experimental Psychology at Ghent University under the supervision of Prof Marcel Brass. He then undertook postdoctoral research at Duke University (with Prof Tobias Egner), and Oxford University (with Prof Mark Stokes and Prof Christopher Summerfield), funded by fellowships from the Wellcome Trust, Research Foundation Flanders, and Linacre College Oxford. In 2022, he joined the School of Psychology and the CHBH as Assistant Professor.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Muhle-Karbe is looking for curious and motivated students who are interested in behavioural and neuroscientific studies of learning, memory, and decision-making. Please feel free to get in touch to discuss potential projects and funding opportunities. (p.muhle-karbe@bham.ac.uk).

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Chau Delgado, JM, Ison, MJ, Muhle-Karbe, PS, Stokes, MG, Hall-McMaster, S & Myers, NE 2025, 'Alpha and beta oscillations mediate the effect of motivation on neural coding of cognitive flexibility', Biological Psychology, vol. 200, 109085. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2025.109085

Löwe, AT, Touzo, L, Muhle-Karbe, PS, Saxe, AM, Summerfield, C & Schuck, NW 2024, 'Abrupt and spontaneous strategy switches emerge in simple regularised neural networks', PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 20, no. 10, e1012505. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012505

Muhle-Karbe, PS, Sheahan, H, Pezzulo, G, Spiers, HJ, Chien, S, Schuck, NW & Summerfield, C 2023, 'Goal-seeking compresses neural codes for space in the human hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex', Neuron, vol. 111, no. 23, pp. 3885-3899.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.08.021

Muhle-Karbe, P, Myers, NE & Stokes, MG 2021, 'A hierarchy of functional states in working memory', The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 41, no. 20, pp. 4461-4475. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3104-20.2021

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