Who are we?
Antonia Hamilton
Dr Hamilton is a Professor of Social Neuroscience at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (UCL). Her research focuses on the brain and cognitive mechanisms which support face to face social interaction, including imitation, eye contact and visual perspective taking. This work uses innovative methods including fNIRS, virtual reality and motion capture to understand how social skills differ in autism, and the neural mechanisms of social interaction.
E-mail: a.hamilton@ucl.ac.uk
Paul Burgess
My interests lie in six overlapping areas. They all concern themselves with discovering the role that the frontal lobes of the brain play in enabling us to decide what we want to achieve, and then organise our behaviour to that end, often over long time periods. I am also interested in how we can measure and treat executive function problems in people who have suffered brain damage, and the neuropsychiatric sequelae of frontal lobe dysfunction.
1. The functions of rostral prefrontal cortex (Area 10)
My recent research is indicating a special role for a large part of the frontal lobes known as Area 10 in many functions important to human cognition. Up until now, virtually nothing has been known about the functions of this area, and my group is trying to discover what it is there for and how it works. This is an especially exciting topic because so little is known: it is likely that the next few years will see rapid scientific advance.
2. Functional organisation of the frontal lobe cognitive system
My group and I build and test information processing models of how the cognitive processes supported (at least in part) by the frontal lobes work together to perform various functions. The experiments I carry out vary from e.g. theoretical studies of simple inhibition or initiation processes, to studies of complex behaviours in real life (e.g. shopping).
3. Memory control processes
I am interested in how people recall events that have happened to them, which is a very complex process of reconstruction and memory for "source". One insight into how this process operates is to look at what happens when it fails, and I study these mistakes both in healthy people (e.g. Burgess and Shallice, 1996) and in neurological patients, where the syndrome of gross memory errors is known as "confabulation."
4. Behavioural organisation
I carry out studies which aim to discover how we form plans, schedule our activities (known as "multitasking"), remember to carry out intended actions after a delay ("prospective memory") and assess the consequences of our actions. These use functional imaging (PET or fMRI), human neuropsychology, and experimental psychology methods, as well as others (e.g. verbal protocol analysis; individual differences; ageing; developmental studies).
5. Assessment and rehabilitation of executive function deficits
Deficits in executive functions may be devastating to someone's ability to cope with everyday life, work and relationships. It is very important therefore that we can understand these problems, measure them, and develop ways of helping people to overcome their deficits. I am inventor or co-inventor of a number of neuropsychological tests of executive function which are now used in clinics throughout the world (e.g. the Hayling and Brixton Tests; BADS battery; Six Element Test; Multiple Errands Test) and have, through collaborations with my clinical colleagues, a long-standing research interest in developing rehabilitation techniques.
6. Frontal lobe function and mental health.
I am interested in finding out the role that purturbation or atypical development of frontal lobe structures might play in the presentation of psychiatric and psychosocial disorders such as schizophrenia and autistic spectrum disorders (especially Asperger Syndrome).
E-mail: p.burgess@ucl.ac.uk
Ilias Tachtsidis
Dr Tachtsidis is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and Reader in Biomedical Engineering. He is a senior member of the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory and heads the Multi-Modal Spectroscopy Group. His research is highly multi-disciplinary, crossing the boundaries between engineering, physics, neuroscience and clinical medicine. The technical focus of his work is the development and use of non-invasive optical instruments and techniques for monitoring brain oxygenation, haemodynamics and metabolism. A major part of Dr Tachtsidis research is to investigate the use and limitations of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy or fNIRS in neuroscience applications. In addition, the clinical focus of his work is the identification and use of optically measured biomarkers to assess the functional status of the brain. The principal challenge of his research is the non-invasive measurement, with NIRS, of cytochrome-c-oxidase (CCO), a mitochondrial enzyme responsible for cellular energy production. Dr Tachtsidis and his team have developed unique NIRS systems that currently are used at UCL Hospitals in London, to monitor adult traumatic-brain-injury patients and birth asphyxiated infants. He has long term collaborations with industry that includes Hitachi and Hamamatsu Photonics.
Joy Hirsch
Joy Hirsch, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and currently a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology at Yale University, in New Haven, CT. She has pioneered many breakthroughs in understanding the workings of the human brain, and is one of the early developers of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an imaging technique that enables the visualization of individual brain structures and large-scale neural networks that are engaged during specific tasks and cognitive processes. She has recently been recruited to Yale University to head a new Brain Function Laboratory leaving her previous position as Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University where she was the Director and founder of the university-wide Functional MRI Research Center.
Her research on the human brain has focused on understanding principles of the relationships between the brain, mind, and behavior, and the translation of these advances to serve many medical applications. Examples of applications include the development of brain mapping procedures for neurosurgical planning that localize regions of brain specialized for important functions such as language, movement, vision, and hearing in order for neurosurgeons to protect those functions during procedures such as tumor resections. Her basic research has also made fundamental contributions to understanding the neural processes that mediate emotion such as fear and conflict and the control of those responses. These studies form the foundation for her continuing research interests in translations to medical conditions such as understanding the basis for anxiety disorders and treating strategies. Her research also includes clinical applications such as the development of an imaging diagnostic for autism (a recently issued U.S. patent), and isolation of neural mechanisms associated with obesity.
Professor Hirsch has published over 120 peer-reviewed scientific papers and chapters, is a popular world-wide lecturer on the brain, and served as a curator for the 2010-2011 Brain Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. She was awarded the prestigious Gamow Science prize in 2009 for her accomplishments in science and was one of the five top women scientists featured in the 2011 World Science Festival.
More information on her web site: www.fMRI.org
E-mail: j.hirsch@ucl.ac.uk
Paola Pinti
Paola Pinti is the Senior Research Laboratory Developer at Birkbeck College and previously a Research Associate in the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory in the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at UCL. Her research involves the use of the new generation of wireless and wearable functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) devices in naturalistic environments. More precisely, her work focuses on the development and implementation of new algorithms and tools for the analysis of fNIRS data collected in more ecologically-valid settings with unstructured cognitive experiments. Her current role involves the development of a new Toddler Lab that integrates cutting-edge wearable technologies like fNIRS, EEG, motion capture, eye-tracking in an immersive Virtual Reality environment for the study brain development in ecological settings.
E-mail: p.pinti@ucl.ac.uk ; p.pinti@bbk.ac.uk
James Crum
James is a PhD student in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. His current research focuses on the design and implementation of real-world neuroimaging experiments. More specifically, his recent work has used fNIRS-based hyperscanning in a semi-naturalistic, clinical setting to investigate the inter- and intra-brain mechanisms by which adaptive, rational changes in cognition are brought about. General interests include typical and atypical functional specialization and integration within the prefrontal cortex, exercise neuroscience, and executive functions such as reasoning, emotional regulation and prospection.
E-mail: james.crum.16@ucl.ac.uk
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/icn/research/research-groups/metacognition-executive-functions
Uzair Hakim
I am a PhD student part of the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory at UCL Medical Physics. My research focuses on the development of analysis methods and tools for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) systems within the field of Cognitive Neuroscience, with the long-term aim of fNIRS being used as a standard functional neuroimaging modality.
E-mail: uzair.hakim.17@ucl.ac.uk
Sara De Felice
Sara De Felice is a PhD student in the Social Neuroscience group led by Dr Hamilton at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (UCL). After obtaining a Psychology degree, Sara completed a MSc in Mind and Brain Sciences at UCL and a MSc in Neuroscience of integrative biology at Sorbonne Universités and École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Sara returned to UCL when she was offered a fully-funded PhD position as part of the Leverhulme DTP for the Ecological Study of the Brain. Her current work focuses on the behavioral and neural signature of social interaction in naturalistic environment. Specifically, she is interested in whether behavioral synchrony and brain-to-brain coupling observed during natural conversations can tell us something about how well we learn from others.
E-mail: sara.felice.16@ucl.ac.uk
Isla Jones
Isla Jones is a PhD student in the Hamilton lab at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL. In collaboration with Shimadzu and the Tachtsidis lab, her research involves using fNIRS in real world settings to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the audience effect, which arises when an individual’s behaviour changes because they believe another person is watching them (Hamilton and Lind, 2016). During her PhD, she will also work on the development and improvement of fNIRS data analysis procedures, specifically the integration of various physiological signals such as heart rate and respiration rate.
E-mail: isla.jones.19@ucl.ac.uk
Collaborators
Shimadzu
Yale lab