Professor Charles Leek PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS FHEA

My teaching activity is in the area of cognitive and clinical neuroscience.

Imagine that you are sitting in a room observing the scene around you. You see a cup, and a guitar, and you instantly recognise them. If you want to, you can reach out across space and pick them up. In fact, this is something that most of us can do effortlessly. But how do we do it?

* How does our visual system work? How can we perceive, recognise and interact with objects so easily?
* How do we know where particular objects are in space, and how to reach them?
* What happens to our visual system when we are no longer able to recognise objects as is the case of some individuals following an injury to the brain?
* Why does the visual agnosic IES think that the guitar is a tennis racket, and that the cup is a bucket?
* Why does AH, an otherwise neurologically normal individual, systematically reach in the mirror-opposite direction when asked to manually locate an object?

What do these kinds of disorders tell us about the organisation and structure of the human brain? My teaching in this area introduces students to theoretical, empirical and methodological developments in studies of high-level brain function. We focus our investigation on human vision, and critically examine evidence from studies of the neurologically normal brain using a range of techniques including functional brain imaging (e.g., fMRI, fMRS), brain stimulation (e.g., TMS, tDCS), eye tracking and electro-encephalography (EEG), and from clinical studies of acquired, developmental and degenerative cognitive impairments following brain injury (visual agnosia, prosopagnosia, Parkinson’s disease).

These topics are particularly relevant for students interested in clinical and cognitive aspects of human brain function, and those wishing to develop a broader understanding of current research methodologies in clinical and cognitive neuroscience in preparation for clinical training or a research career (e.g., PhD).