Eye movements in the real world


eye

We currently have a fully funded studentship opportunity available to examine how we direct attention to social cues in the real world. Supervised by Dr Frouke Hermens and myself the project will involve using a mobile eye tracking system. The work builds on earlier work by Frouke, myself and my former PhD student Nicola Gregory (now at Bournemouth) looking at how socio-biological cues such as eye gaze direction and pointing finger cues direct attention in an automatic way.

 

See here for more details of the project and earlier posts on my work with Nicola on socio-biological cueing here

 

KTP Grant Success – Improving functional vision in children through a visual search computer game

We have been awarded a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) grant worth approximately £130K to support an exciting project which aims to apply visual neuroscience to the rehabilitation of childhood cerebral visual impairment and special education. The work is a collaboration between the University of Lincoln, Schoolof Psychologyand the West of England School and College for young people with little or no sight (WESC) (www.westengland.ac.uk). The grant will employ an experienced neuroscience / psychology researcher at WESC inExeter who will develop and evaluate a visual search rehabilitation computer game for use in children with partial visual loss. Dr Conor Linehan from the Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre (an expert in educational games) will also play a leading role in the project (http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/clinehan).

WESC approached us as they realised that many of the children and young people they work with have problems which are due to damage to the brains visual centres rather than disorders of the eye itself. The project will also help WESC build expertise and understanding of the role of the brain in visual perception and its disorders. Previous research has demonstrated that visual search training can lead to significant recovery of vision following damage to visual regions of the brain in adults, but adult training programmes are simply to boring to use with children. At the same time, we expect that implementing visual search training as a game could also lead to improvements to provision of search training to adults with hemianopia (visual loss following stroke).

KTPs are a national initiative which supports partnerships between business and universities enabling Associates to work on challenging, high profile projects (www.ktponline.org.uk). Financial support for the KTP project with WESC is provided by the Technology Strategy Board with offer of a part contribution from the Medical Research Council.

Please let me know if you are interested in finding out more about this project. If you think you have a suitable background and are interested in applying for the position please see the job and application procedure here: http://jobs.lincoln.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=EL1076A

See also previous post: https://hodgson.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2012/05/28/visual-neuroscience-and-specialist-education/

Early Career Researcher Position in Psychology / Cognitive Neuroscience

A lectureship is curently available in the School of Psychology University of Lincoln for an early career researcher. In order to qualify as an early career researcher you may have recently completed a PhD or a post-doctoral research position for several years but not held a grant in your own right or a full academic appointment with a requirement to develop independent research. We are interested in candidates from all areas of psychology who have a good and developing publication record and potential for gaining research funding, but please get in touch with me in particular if your research area is in neuropsychology, visual or cognitive neuroscience to discuss this opportunity.

A link to the job advert is given here http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AFE866/early-career-researchers/ and further details of the Schools research groups and staff interests are here:  http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/psychology/research/

The School of Psychology is well equiped for Cognitive Neuroscience research with a full EEG / ERP recording system, Tobii and Eyelink 1000 Eyetracker as well  a Transcranial Magentic Stimulation system, Sleep Lab and psychophysiological recording equipment. Opportunities for carrying out fMRI based research also exist via several close by research centres. We are also developing excellent links with nearby local hospitals for patient based work.

PhD Research Opportunities

A fully funded studentship is available in the School of Psychology, University of Lincoln

Applicants are encouraged from all areas of psychology, but please contact me in particular if you are interested in eye movement control and cognition in Parkinsons disease and focal brain damage.  Another potential project for a PhD researcher would be the development of saccadic orienting to socio-biological cues in children (see https://hodgson.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2012/04/10/giving-people-the-eye-and-showing-them-the).

The School of Psychology is well equiped for Cognitive Neuroscience research with a full EEG / ERP recording system, Tobii and soon to arrive Eyelink 1000 Eyetracker as well  a Transcranial Magentic Stimulation system. Opportunities for carrying out fMRI based research also exist via several close by research centres.

A link to the School website including research groups, staff interests and lab pages is here: http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/psychology/research.htm

Further particulars of the PhD studentship opportunities in the College of Social Sciences including details of how to apply are available via:  http://jobs.lincoln.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=PHDSS