University of St Andrews

In broad terms, my research is concerned with response control. I am interested in both exploring the neural basis of the control of movement (both eye and skeletal-motor) and also in investigating more psychological (or 'executive') functions, such as attention, expectation and planning which influence and modify processes of response selection. To these topics, I apply a range of neuroscientific techniques, including psychopharmacology, neurophysiology and sophisticated analysis of both operant and unconditioned behaviour in humans (healthy volunteers and patient populations) and experimental animals. I am particularly interested in the area of the brain called the basal ganglia. These are a collection of cell groups in the forebrain which are densely interconnected. In addition, they recieive information from all areas of cortex and pass signals back to frontal cortex. This location means that they are well placed to control everything and probably do.