In recognition of Dr. Madan’s contributions to higher education–including research methods training, application of learning sciences to other fields, and post-PhD career guidance resource development–he has been awarded Senior Fellow from Advance HE (SFHEA).

“Senior Fellowship is awarded to professionals […] whose comprehensive understanding and effective practice provides a basis from which they lead or influence the learning and teaching practices of others (peers, colleagues, mentees, etc.) who teach and/or support high-quality learning.”

Dr. Madan contributed to an introductory chapter in this new text on Methods for Analyzing Large Neuroimaging Datasets, along with collaborators in France and Ireland.

Dr. Madan has been chosen for the 2025 British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience’s (BACN) Early-Career Award.

“This award aims to reward and to recognise distinguished scholarship and research excellence undertaken over a period by a cognitive neuroscientist who is currently active in research, and who has made a substantial contribution to Cognitive Neuroscience in the UK.”

James won a poster award at the recent meeting of the British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience!

Preprint coming soon.

Final version now out in eLife, conducted in collaboration with researchers at Newcastle University and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

“This study presents valuable framework and findings to our understanding of the brain as a fractal object by observing the stability of its shape property within 11 primate species and by highlighting an application to the effects of aging on the human brain.”

New paper out in PNAS!

“The present studies provide a framework for investigating imagination as a collaborative process in which individuals cocreate shared representations of hypothetical events—what we call collaborative imagination. Across two preregistered studies (N=244), we provide evidence that collaborative imagination of a shared future fosters social connection in novel dyads—beyond imagining a shared future individually or shared experience in general. Subjective ratings and natural language processing of participants’ imagined narratives illuminate the representational features of imagined events shaped by collaborative imagination.”

We are organizing a satellite meeting on Narrative Approaches to Studying Memory at the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior, & Cognitive Science which will take place from 8am-1pm on June 25 in Edmonton, Canada.

In this satellite meeting, we will discuss the most popular technological advances used in the field of autobiographical memory, and how they can be leveraged to advance theoretical models of memory. We additionally highlight some of the pitfalls of current methodologies.

Dr. Madan will be giving the keynote presentation at the Liverpool Neuroscience Group’s event on Careers Beyond Academia, based on his work on the Academia and the World Beyond research.

Memories That Matter is out!

What makes some experiences more memorable than others? How can you better remember specific information later? Memories That Matter addresses these questions and more.

The book is intended for senior-level undergraduate course, graduate seminar, as well as for researchers.

The second edition of The Fractal Geometry of the Brain just came out!

I am delighted to have contributed to revising one of the chapters, Fractal Dimension Analysis in Neurological Disorders: An Overview, along with collaborators in Germany and Spain.

This is the first paper that extends the Academia and the World Beyond book series.

Here I conducted a heirarchical qualitative classification analysis on the 53 interviews to give students a better guide on which interviews/career journeys are relevant to them. This analysis also yielded insights into different categories of career paths, based on the types of skills they rely on.

This book is a collection of 31 interviews with those who have completed a PhD and are now in a non-academic role. Interviewees provide background into their PhD topic and discuss how they transitioned to their current position, including what additional training was necessary and how their PhD training has helped them succeed.