Olga Bogachko Holmblad | TRAINEE

Hi, my name is Olga, and I am a Swedish student in the Research MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Leiden University. I completed my BSc in Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2025, specialising in Brain and Cognition.

For my bachelor’s thesis, I investigated human visual shape completion using generative adversarial networks trained on natural or radial-frequency shapes. This sparked my interest in using computational modelling to investigate latent cognitive and neuromodulatory processes. Alongside my studies in Leiden University, I work in the MENTAL Lab on research involving mental representations, option generation, and decision-making. Throughout my master's, I have become particularly interested in dopamine's role in learning and decision-making.

In September 2026, I joined the Motivational and Cognitive Control Lab as a master’s intern within the ERC-funded ChemControl project. For my thesis, with the support of Yanfang, Upasana and Egbert, I model data from a pharmacological study investigating how dopamine influences controllability inference. I am also helping Yanfang and Mihaela run an fMRS study examining the prefrontal neurochemical mechanisms of controllability inference.