Dr Chris Atherton

Qualifications

BSc (Hons) Psychology (University of Glasgow),
MSc Neuroscience (University of Manchester),
PhD (University College Wales, Bangor), "The Neurobiology of Object Constancy".
PgCert Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (University of Central Lancashire)

Background

After finishing my MSc (sponsored by the MRC) at the University of Manchester, I spent three years as a PhD student, working on a BBSRC-funded collaboration between Manchester and Bangor. I joined the department in 2002.

Current Teachings

PS1200 - Vision, psychophysics, subliminal perception
PS2400 - Visual perception, auditory perception
PS2500 - Cerebral asymmetry, "split-brain" patients, physiological psychology labs
PS2700 - Statistics workshops and seminars
PS2850 - Functional brain anatomy, neuroimaging
PS3301 - Brain imaging techniques in clinical psychology
PS3408 - The use of brain imaging techniques in understanding memory disorders
PS3506 - Schizophrenia
PS3509 - Motor function in the brain, neuroplasticity and recovery from motor disorders
PS3800 - Brain imaging and frontiers in neuropsychology
PS2500, we should remove "physiological psychology labs" 
XS2203 - Sensory perception and its neural pathways

Click here to make an appointment to see Chris

Research Interests

I am fascinated by visual cognition. One area I am currently researching is the visual cognition of the lecture theatre: how what we show in lectures affects what students remember. The human brain is a very visual organ; I'm trying to work towards a better understanding of how we absorb visual information, and how this knowledge can be leveraged for teaching purposes. In particular, I'm interested in the concept of 'cognitive load' (the amount of processing required in order to understand a concept) and how that can be manipulated through the use of visual aids, but I'm also exploring other theoretical approaches too.

Another area, which I have been exploring since my PhD, is the relationship between the objects we encounter and their stored representations in memory: one way of understanding this relationship is to explore response-time data when people view these objects or have to make decisions about them, though in the past I have also used fMRI and ERP to measure the brain's involvement in these processes (so far we know that viewing misoriented or angularly disparate shapes recruits very similar cognitive processes to actually picking the objects up and physically rotating them into alignment).

On a more general level, I am interested in functional brain imaging, eye-tracking and other techniques that can better allow us to understand higher cognitive functions. Some areas that interest me are insightful problem-solving (as in anagrams/chess moves/lateral thinking puzzles), cerebral asymmetry of perceptual and cognitive functions, and synaesthesia.

Representative publications

Johnston S, Leek EC, Atherton C, Thacker N & Jackson A (2004). Functional contribution of medial premotor cortex to visuo-spatial transformation in humans. Neuroscience Letters, 355, 209-212.
Leek, EC, Atherton, CJ and Thierry, GL (2007). Cognitive bases of object constancy during visual recognition of misoriented objects revealed by event-related potentials. Vision Research, 47, 706-713.