Ori Ossmy

Head of the Physical Cognition Lab

Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
School of Psychology, Birkbeck College
Mail: Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Office: Henry Wellcome Building, Room 105
Email: ori.ossmy@bbk.ac.uk      
Website: https://www.physicalcoglab.co.uk/

Phone: +44 (0)20 3926 1132

Research Interests

Physical cognition is ubiquitous across every age and culture—how to navigate a cluttered environment, use a tool, and so on. As our bodies, skills, and environments change, new physical problems emerge and require new means to solve them. With learning and development, children respond more adaptively and efficiently to environmental challenges and opportunities. With injury and ageing, responses become less adaptive and efficient. My overarching goal is to understand (and intervene on) the processes that underlie changes in physical cognition and behavioural problem solving.

My research is based on the working assumption that macro behavioural changes occurring over relatively long time periods—changes due to learning, development, injury, and rehabilitation—emerge from micro, real-time experiences. These real-time experiences, in turn, play out in an interactive system of perceptual, neural, cognitive, and motor processes. The efficiency of these processes and their interactions differs widely among individuals.

The work in my Physical Cognition Lab reflects a unique integration of theory and methods drawn from developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and motor control where I use state-of-the-art concepts and technologies to address critical questions about behavioural problem solving. Bridging the theoretical with the technical, I combine interdisciplinary perspectives (development, behaviour, neuroscience, motor control, computer science), recording methods (fMRI, EEG, EMG, tACS, ECoG, single-unit recordings, eye tracking, motion tracking, virtual reality, and video), analytic techniques (real-time, machine learning, and robotics), populations (infants to elderly adults and patients), and behavioural tasks (manual and locomotor).

Research Grants

Scholarships and Awards

Publications

1. Muszynska, M., Ossmy, O. (accepted). The BlockQuest game: Digital behavioral phenotyping of ADHD using embodied serious game in virtual reality. In Joint International Conference on Serious Games. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
2. Hascher, S., Ossmy, O., Pontes, H. (accepted). The Application of Serious Games in Virtual Reality as Intervention for Sugar Addiction. In Joint International Conference on Serious Games. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
3. Grandchamp des Raux, H., Ghilardi, T., Soderberg, C., Ossmy, O. (2024). The role of action concepts in physical reasoning: insights from late childhood. Philosophical Transactions B, 379(1911), 20230154.
4. Cherry, L., Soderberg, C., Haetter, J., Ossmy, O. (2024). Extended reality in STEM: A modernised educational tool for children. Journal of Human Centered Technology, 3(2), 10-20.
5. Cherry, L., Cheng, M., Ghilardi, T., Ossmy, O. (2024). Automatic real-time hand tracking enhances adolescents' spatial skills by eliminating haptic feedback. In IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) (pp. 1-6).
6. Krishna, A., Kaplan, B. E., Pope, J., Todorovic, S., Adolph, K. E., Ossmy, O. (2024). A computer-vision approach for testing developmental changes in object manipulation. In IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) (pp. 1-6).
7. Han, D., Aziere, N., Ossmy, O., Wang, T., Krishna, A., Shen, R., Wang, H., Todorovic, S., Adolph, K.E. (2024). Infants’ developing environment: Integration of computer vision and human annotation to quantify where infants go, what they touch, and what they see. In IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) (pp. 1-8). *ICDL Best Paper Award
8. Ossmy, O., Han, D., MacAlpine, P., Hoch, J., Stone, P., Adolph, K. E. (2024). Walking and falling: using robot simulations to model the role of errors in infant walking. Developmental science, e13449. *Developmental Science Best Paper Award
9. Hascher, S., Shuster, A., Mukamel, R., Ossmy, O. (2023). The power of multivariate patterns in identifying EEG correlates of interlimb coupling. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 17.
10. Dexter, M., & Ossmy, O. (2023). The effects of typical ageing on cognitive control: recent advances and future directions. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 15.
11. Ossmy, O., Kaplan, B., Han, D., Xu, M., Mukamel, R., Adolph, K.E. (2022). Real-time processes in the development of action planning. Current Biology 32, 1–10.
12. Shuster, A., Inzelberg, L., Ossmy, O., Izakson, L., Hanein, Y., Levy, D. (2021). Lie to my face: An electromyography approach to deceptive behavior. Brain and Behavior, e2386
13. Ossmy, O., Han, D., Kaplan, B., Xu, M., Bianco, C., Mukamel, R., Adolph, K.E. (2021). Children do not distinguish efficient from inefficient actions during observation. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1-13
14. Le, H., Hoch, J., Ossmy, O., Adolph, K., Fern, X., Fern, A. (2021). Modeling infant free play behavior using hidden markov models. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), pp. 1-6
15. Hoch, J.*, Ossmy, O.*, Hasan, S., Cole, W., Adolph, K.E. (2021). “Dancing” together: Infant-mother locomotor synchrony. Child Development, 92(4), 1337-1353 
16. Ossmy, O., Adolph, K.E. (2020). Real-time assembly of coordination patterns in human infants. Current Biology, 30, 1-10
17. Lakertz, Y.*, Ossmy, O.*, Friedmann, N., Mukamel, R., Fried, I. (2021). Single-cell activity in human STG during perception of phonemes is organized according to manner of articulation. NeuroImage, 226, 117499.
18. Ossmy, O., Mansano, L., Frenkel-Toledo, S., Kagan, E., Koren, S., Gilron, R., Reznik, D., Soroker, N., Mukamel, R. (2020). Motor learning in Hemi-Parkinson using VR-manipulated sensory feedback. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 1-13
19. Ossmy, O., Han, D., Cheng, M., Kaplan, B., Adolph, K.E. (2020). Look before you fit: Real-time planning cascade in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 189, 104696
20. Ossmy, O., Mansano, L., Frenkel-Toledo, S., Kagan, E., Koren, S., Gilron, R., Reznik, D., Soroker, N., Mukamel, R. (2020). Motor learning by cross education in Hemi-Parkinson’s disease: Case study of the effects of virtual mirrored sensory feedback. 2019 International Conference on Virtual Rehabilitation (ICVR), Tel Aviv, Israel, 2019, pp. 1-9
21. Ossmy, O., Gilmore, R. O., & Adolph, K. E (2020). AutoViDev: A computer-vision framework to enhance and accelerate research in human development. In K. Arai & S. Kapoor (Eds.), Advances in computer vision: CVC 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 944. Springer.
22. Adolph, K. E., Hoch, J. E., & Ossmy, O. (2020). James Gibson’s ecological approach to locomotion and manipulation: Development and changing affordances. In J. Wagman & J. Blau (Eds.). Perception as information detection: Reflections on Gibson’s ecological approach to visual perception. New York: Taylor & Francis, pp. 248-266
23. Karasik, L., Tamis-LeMonda, C.S., Ossmy, O., Adolph, K.E. (2018). The ties that bind: Cradling in Tajikistan. Plos One 13:e0204428
24. Ossmy, O.*, Hoch, J.*, MacAlpine, P., Hasan, S., Stone, P., Adolph, K.E. (2018).  Variety wins: Soccer-playing robots and infant walking. Frontiers in Neuro-robotics, 12:19
25. Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2018). Perception as a route for transfer of motor knowledge: Perspectives from human neuroscience. Neuroscience, 382:144-153
26. Aridan N.*, Ossmy, O.*, Mukamel, R. (2018). EEG mu wave suppression during action observation corresponds with subsequent individual changes in execution. Brain Research, 1691:55-63
27. Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2017). Behavioral and neural effects of congruency of visual feedback during short-term motor learning. NeuroImage, 172:864-873
28. Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2017). Using virtual reality to transfer motor skill knowledge from one hand to another. Journal of Visualized Experiments: JoVE, (127)
29. Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2017). Short term motor-skill acquisition improves with size of self-controlled virtual hands. PloS One, 12(1), e0168520
30. Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2016). Neural network underlying intermanual skill transfer in humans. Cell Reports, 17:2891-2900
31. Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2016). Activity in superior parietal cortex during training by observation predicts asymmetric learning levels across hands. Scientific Reports, 6:32133
32. Ossmy, O., Fried, I., Mukamel, R. (2015). Decoding speech perception from single cell activity in humans. NeuroImage, 117:151-159
33. Reznik, D., Ossmy, O., Mukamel, R. (2015). Enhanced auditory evoked activity to self-generated sounds is mediated by primary and supplementary motor cortices. The Journal of Neuroscience, 35:2173-2180
34. Ossmy, O., Ben-Shachar, M., Mukamel, R. (2014). Decoding letter position in word reading. Cortex, 59:74-83

Doctoral Students & Post-doctoral Associates

• Tommaso Ghilardi, Post-Doctoral Associate
• Giulia Serino, Post-Doctoral Associate
• Hélène Grandchamp dex raux, PhD candidate (first supervision)
• Jazmine Hall, PhD candidate (first supervision)
• Nina Peleg, PhD candidate (first supervision)
• Marianna Muszynska, PhD candidate (first supervision)
• Arezoo Alford, PhD candidate (first supervision)
• Mahnoor Tariq, PhD candidate (first supervision)
• Maria Paz Cerbecos (secondary supervision), PhD candidate
• Sophie Hascher (secondary supervision), PhD candidate
• Linda Cerminara (secondary supervision), PhD candidate
• Georgie Edwards-Lowe (secondary supervision), PhD candidate