Academic Staff

Dr Tom Stafford (Lecturer) The cognitive neuroscience of action selection

Dr Paul Overton (Senior Lecturer) Biological bases of action selection Compulsive behaviour

Prof Tony Prescott (ABRG Co-director) Active sensing (particularly active touch) Computational models of natural action selection The layered control architecture of the vertebrate brain Robot models of biological control systems Behavioural and cognitive deficits in Parkinson's Disease and Schizophrenia Dynamics of child development (focusing on Children's drawing skills)

Prof Peter Redgrave Biological bases of action selection Layered control architectures in the vertebrate brain

Prof Kevin Gurney (ABRG Co-director) Computational models of the basal ganglia at multiple levels of description Layered architectures in animals and robots Neuroinformatics Principal Investigator on the REVERB Project Co-Investigator on the CARMEN e-Science Project

Research Staff

Dr Ric Wood (Research Associate) Reverb Project - models of the striatum Synaptic noise Updating the systems level model of the basal ganglia to include: The D1 striatal to GPe pathway. A more detailed dopamine mechanism.|>The effects of shunting inhibition. Biophysical Models of the striatum and Basal Ganglia Compartmental modelling of striatal neurons. Spiking models of striatal neurons. Network models of the striatum.

Dr Nathan Lepora (Research Associate) CARMEN e-Science Project neuronal parameter estimation single-compartment neuron modelling multi-compartment neuron modelling reduced neuron models System-level models of the cerebellum models of classical conditioning models of reflex adaptation

Dr Sean Anderson (Research Associate) BIOTACT project - Active touch eye-robot project Computational modelling of the cerebellum VOR, OKR and saccades The oculomotor plant System identification of linear and nonlinear dynamical systems Adaptive noise cancellation

Dr Ansgar Koene (Research Associate) Robot models of biological control systems Human visual perception and motor control

Dr Charles Fox (Research Associate) Hierarchical probabilistic models of perception (BIOTACT) Probabilistic neural models of navigation (ICEA)

Dr Ben Mitch(inson) (Research Associate) Sub-cortical sensorimotor systems and behaviour in the rat whisker pathway Whisking pattern generation The BIOTACT Project Tools and approaches for integration and efficiency in research computation BRAHMS SystemML

Dr Yohko Hatada (Honorary Research Fellow) "Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience": What differentiates living things from non-living things? I am particularly interested in the mechanisms of modifiability by absorbing information from the world as "phenomena of life", using different time scales: adaptive, plastic, developmental and evolutionary mechanisms, and combining between them. I aim to define what the "phenomena of life" are in a unified theory, using different levels from molecular to behavioral interaction within a system and with environmental changes.

Dr Mark Humphries (Research Associate) ICEA project Structure and function of the brainstem reticular formation The basal ganglia as an action selection mechanism Graph theory applications in neuroscience Single neuron models Spike train analysis techniques Neural substrate of decision making The function of the thalamic reticular nucleus Thalamocortical loop processing

Dr Jon Chambers (Research Associate) Reverb Project - Oculomotor control

Research Students

Alex Cope (PhD Student) Action selection in active vision Funded by the EPSRC

Rufino Bolado-Gomez (PhD Student) Modelling of basal ganglia: action-selection and reinforcement learning mechanisms Funded by CONACYT

Stuart Wilson (PhD Student) Computational neuroscience of tactile sensing Funded by the EPSRC

Mat Evans (PhD Student) Computational methods for active touch sensing Funded by the EPSRC

Darren Hoyland (PhD Student) REVERB project - Signal integration in the neostriatum

Robyn Grant (PhD Student) Behavioural functions of rat whiskers Funded by the EPSRC

Support Staff

Gill Ryder (Administrative Support for BIOTACT) BIOTACT project

Former Members

• Dr Tak-Shing Chan.
• Neil Girdhar.
• David Lawrence.
• Dr Robert Stewart (now in Oxford).
• Dr Samantha Hartley (now at the Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool).
• Dr Fernando Montes-Gonzalez - An embodied model of action selection by the vertebrate basal ganglia.

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