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Overview
Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Professor in the Department of Psychology+44 (0) 191 33 43261
Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing+44 (0) 191 33 40437

Biography

Research Interests

My research primarily examines the relationship between visual attention and visual consciousness, and the perception of the material properties of objects.

In 1999 I discovered that prompting neurological patients to attend to areas in which they were blind because of brain damage could improve their ability to respond accurately to stimuli of which they were unaware - attention operating independently of awareness. This contradicted the view held by many psychologists and philosophers that attention was the ‘gateway’ to consciousness. I followed this up with studies showing similar dissociations between attention and awareness in a variety of types of attention in neurotypical observers.

In 2014 I showed that the perception of colour as a property of objects in the world occurs independently of having an experience of colour. An example of the concept of object-colour is our ability to know the colour of something, say a bus, regardless of whether it is in blueish shade or it is being illuminated by bright yellow direct sunlight (or any other natural light). The fact that my colleagues and I could show that the visual system held a representation of object-colour even when we had used a ‘masking’ technique to prevent people from consciously experiencing colour, was at odds with long-held philosophical and scientific views, dating from Aristotle to the present-day, that we estimate the properties of things in the world by drawing inferences from our experience.

I continue to collaborate with philosophers in exploring these findings and, in some cases, have managed to convince them to change their views!

I am very fortunate to have been made a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in their programme on Brain, Mind and Consciousness in recognition of the work I’ve just described. This CIFAR fellowship funds much of my ongoing work on the nature of consciousness.

I greatly enjoy work outside the typical scope of my bread and butter - the psychology of vision. I have been working, very much as the junior partner, with my colleague Prof. Dorothy Cowie, on the ways in which children develop understanding of the structure of their own bodies as they grow and their abilities to use their bodies to perform actions. Much of this work has involved experiments using virtual reality to test the effects of novel experiences in both children and adults. Something that all our participants seem to enjoy, and be fascinated by, no matter what their ages!  

I have also been using virtual reality in work with archaeologists on the origins of art and the mental lives of our distant ancestors. Prof. Paul Pettitt, from the Archaeology Department, and I have been leading a ‘Paleopsychology’ group in Durham where we apply methods from experimental psychology to test hypotheses about the influences psychological factors may have had on the location and content of Palaeolithic art. We have been collaborating with colleagues in Germany on an Anglo-German (AHRC/DFG) funded project on art in an ancient meeting place on the banks of the river Rhine. We recently mounted a public ‘PaleoVision’ exhibition at the Schloss Monrepos Museum in Neuwied, Germany, where much of the artwork from this site is displayed. My archaeological collaboration allowed me to become part of a team who showed that abstract marks accompanying cave art depicting animals, made 35,000 years ago, formed a code representing information about the time of year those animals gave birth and mated – excitingly, the earliest permanent symbolic representation of information, if not quite ‘writing’.

Research interests

  • neuropsychology of awareness, blindsight, colour vision and attention

Esteem Indicators

  • 2016: Invited Speaker, iCOG 3, London.:

    iCOG 3 is an interdisciplinary meeting for graduate students and postdocs in philosophy, psycholopgy and neurosciecne. I was an invited speaker for the 3rd annual meeting on Sense & Space, Senate House, University of London.

  • 2016: Plenary Speaker. Joint Canadian Institute for Advanced Research & Japanese Neuroscience Society Meeting on The Origin of Consciousness. Tokyo.: I was invited as a guest of CiFAR to this meeting including psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and physicists (including a Nobel Laureate) in Japan. July 25th-26th.
  • 2016: Invited speaker, Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Buenos Ares.: I was invited to speak on the relationship between sensation and perception in a symposium with Ned Block (NYU Philosophy), Megan Peters (UCLA Psychology), and Ian Phillips (Oxford Philosophy). The resulting discussion is being published in 'Neurosciecne of Consciousness). 17th-18th June.
  • 2016: Invited Speaker. Neural Roots of Awareness, Emotion and Action in Man and Animals: A tribute to Larry Weiskrantz, Turin.: Invited speaker to this symposium honouring Prof. L Weiskrantz FRS on the occasion of presentation of The Medal of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Papers from the meeting are being published as a special issue of Neuropsychologia which I am co-editing. 30th July.
  • 2016: Keynote speaker, Mississippi Philosophical Association, Oxford MI.: The 2016 meeting of the Mississippi Philosophical Association was on the theme of 'Attention'. 18th-19th March.
  • 2016: Invited Lecturer. European Visual Neuroscience Summer School ‘From Spikes to Awareness’, Rauischholtzhausen, Germany.: This Volkswagen Stiffung funded summer school attracts high-flying postdocs and graduate students from across the world for a two week intensive programme on all aspects of visual neuroscience. 8th-14th September.
  • 2015: Plenary Speaker, Southern Society for Philosophy & Psychology, New Orleans.: I was invited by the President of SSPP to be plenary speaker for the joint philosophy & psychology stream of SSPP (the oldest joint philosophy & psychology society in the USA). New Orleans, LA. 2nd-5th April.
  • 2015: Invited Speaker, PRISM (Perceptual Representation of Illumination, Shape & Material), Leuven, Belgium.: I was invited to speak to the meeting of the EU Training Network comprising a mix of psychologists and computer scientists on novel approaches to understanding the perception of translucence. 6th-9th October.
  • 2015: Invited Lecturer. European Visual Neuroscience Summer School ‘From Spikes to Awareness’, Rauischholtzhausen, Germany.: This Volkswagen Stiffung funded summer school attracts high-flying postdocs and graduate students from across the world for a two week intensive programme on all aspects of visual neuroscience. 5th-9th September.
  • 2014: Co-organiser with P. Azzopardi (Oxford) and Discussant. Symposium on the Neuropsychology of Motion Perception. European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology. Bressanone, Italy.:
  • 2014: Invited speaker. Perceiving the Light: Shadow, Image, Transparency. Durham IAS Interdisciplinary Workshop.:
  • 2014: Invited speaker. Consciousness. Ronald E. Moore Humanities Symposium. Texas Christian University. Fort Worth, Texas.:
  • 2014: Invited speaker. ‘Attention without awareness’. International Workshop on Neuro-Cognitive Mechanisms of Conscious and Unconscious Visual Perception. Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (IAS), Delmenhorst, Germany.:
  • 2014: Invited speaker. Attention and Experience. European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Noto, Sicily.:
  • 2014: Invited speaker. Attention and Experience. European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Noto, Sicily.:
  • 2014: Plenary Speaker, Tucson Consciousness Conference.: Towards a Science of Consciousness, 20th Anniversary Conference. Tucson, AZ. Plenary panel on the Next 20 Years of Consciousness Research. April 22nd-26th 2014.
  • 2013: Invited Speaker. ‘Central Processing of Material Properties’. PRISM 2: The science of light and shade. Bordeaux, France.:
  • 2013: Invited speaker. ‘Attention without awareness’. Interdisciplinary workshop on Type 2 Blindsight: Empirical and Philosophical Perspectives. Dublin.:
  • 2013: Invited speaker. Perception and awareness: An inter-disciplinary analysis. Oxford.: Invited lecture: 'Attention and consciousness in blindsight and normal observers'. Perception and awareness: An inter-disciplinary analysis. A Leverhulme Trust Workshop, Wolfson College, Oxford University. 1st & 2nd February 2013.
  • 2013: Invited Speaker. Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Austin, Texas, USA.: Invited Lecture: 'Attention without consciousness'. 105th Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Austin, TX, February 28 - March 3, 2013.
  • 2013: Invited speaker. International Color Vision Society.: Invited lecture: 'Is cerebral achromatopsia a general deficit in the perception of surfaces?'. International Color Vision Society XXII biennial Symposium, the University of Winchester, United Kingdom. July 14 - 18th 2013.
  • 2012: Invited Speaker, International Neuropsychology Symposium. Corsica, France.: Invited Speaker. Attention without awareness. International Neuropsychology Symposium. Corsica, France. June, 2012.
  • 2012: Plenary Speaker Tucson Consciousness Conference, USA: Plenary lecture. Consciousness and attention. Towards a Science of Consciousness 16. Tucson, USA. April 2012.
  • 2012: Special Guest Lecture. Rudolph Carnap Lectures, University of Bochum, Germany.: Special Guest Lecturer: Attention and Consciousness
  • 2011: Invited Speaker, Varieties of human cortical colour vision workshop, Canada: Invited lecture: Cerebral achromatopsia. Varieties of human cortical colour vision workshop. Vancouver, Canada. August 2011.
  • 2011: Invited Speaker, Varieties of human cortical colour vision conference, Canada: Invited lecture: Perceiving materials. Varieties of human cortical colour vision. Vancouver, Canada. August 2011.
  • 2011: Invited Speaker, EBBS, Spain: Invited lecture. Attention and awareness. European Brain and Behaviour Society. Spain. September 2011.
  • 2011: Invited Speaker, ICON XI Spain: Invited lecture. Attention and awareness. ICON XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience. Mallorca, Spain. September 2011.
  • 2011: Organiser & Chair EWCN Consciousness Symposium: Organiser and Chair European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology Symposium on Why we are consciousness. Bressanone, Italy. January, 2011.
  • 2010: Invited Speaker, INS, Poland: Invited lecture. International Neuropsychogical Society. Krakow, Poland. July 2010.
  • 2007: Organiser & Chair EWCN Visual Awareness Symposium: Organiser and Chair European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology Symposium on The Roots of Visual Awareness. Bressanone, Italy. January, 2007.
  • 2006: EWCN Committee: In 2006 I was elected as a permanent member of the organising committee of the European Workshop in Cognitive Neuropsychology – the leading European conference in the discipline.
  • 2006: Invited Speaker, European Visual Neuroscience Summer School, Germany: Invited Lecture: Visual Awareness. 2006 European Visual Neuroscience Summer School. Rauischoltshausen, Germany, September 2006.
  • 2005: ASSC Workshop Organiser, CalTech, USA: Workshop organiser and presenter. Colour and consciousness. Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. CalTech, Pasadena, USA, July, 2005.
  • 2004: Membership of International Neuropsychological Symposium: In 2004 I was elected to the International Neuropsychological Symposium, a body with membership limited to 120 worldwide which include many of the world’s leading academic neuropsychologists as members.
  • 2003: ASSC Membership Committee Chair: I was elected to the Membership Selection Committee of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. I was chair of the committee for 2005.
  • 2003: Invited Speaker. International Neuropsychology Symposium. Palermo, Italy: Stimulus Cueing in Blindsight. Invited Speaker, International Neuropsychology Symposium. Palermo, Italy. June, 2003.
  • 2002: Invited Speaker, EWCN, Italy: Introductory Lecture, Symposium on Colour Perception. European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology. Bressanone, Italy. January, 2002.
  • 2002: Workshop Organiser, Tucson Consciousness Conference, USA: Workshop organiser and presenter. Colour Vision. Towards a Science of Consciousness V. Tucson, USA, April, 2002.
  • 1999: Invited Speaker, International Pain Congress, Austria: Invited Lecture, Neuropsychology of Consciousness. International Symposium on Pain and Consciousness, Buchen, Austria July, 1999.
  • 1998: Plenary Speaker Tucson Consciousness Conference, USA: Plenary Lecturer. Attention and awareness. Towards a Science of Consciousness III. Tucson, USA. April 1998.

Publications

Book review

Chapter in book

Edited book

Journal Article

Other (Print)

Supervision students