معرفی
Professor Dominic Dwyer is a faculty member at Cardiff University’s School of Psychology. He chairs the BSc and MSc examination boards, teaches statistics, perception, and animal-learning courses, and is available for postgraduate supervision. His research addresses how animals and humans learn, focusing on the neural and computational basis of hedonic reactions and their disruption in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Research interests
- Neuroscience of learning: computational modelling of Pavlovian conditioning (HeiDI model)
- Psychiatric genetics: cognitive and hedonic disturbances in rodent models of schizophrenia, depression and dementia
- Hedonic responses: microstructural analysis of licking behavior to assess reward palatability in laboratory and farm animals
- Perceptual learning: experience-dependent changes in stimulus discrimination and face recognition
Across >150 publications (1997-2025) his work integrates behavioural experiments in rodents, pigs and humans with fMRI, pharmacological and genetic techniques, generating insights relevant to both basic learning theory and applied animal-welfare science.
Funding & collaborations
- Current UKRI (MRC, BBSRC) grants on genetic risk for psychosis via L-type calcium channels and computational modelling of associative learning
- International collaborations: Fondecyt (Chile) on sensory-specific satiety in pigs; University of Sydney, Universidade de Oviedo and others
Teaching & supervision
- Undergraduate: introductory statistics, perception practicals, social/abnormal psychology tutorials
- Postgraduate: animal learning & cognition lectures, project supervision on face perception and evaluative conditioning
- PhD supervision: currently supervising Emma Clark and open to new postgraduate researchers
