Personal Statement
My research is in visual neuroscience. The visual system groups elements into meaningful gestalts. This is called perceptual organization. But when does perceptual organization happen? Does it happen automatically, whatever the participant’s task? Or does it happen selectively, and only when it is task-relevant? I often use EEG to answer these questions, with a particular focus on visual symmetry.

I am also interested open science and fighting the replication crisis in psychology. I have curated all our EEG data into a large public database called ‘The complete Liverpool SPN catalogue’ (https://osf.io/2sncj/). We can use the SPN catalogue to discover new things about the visual system that could never be revealed by a single experiment.

My largest contribution to teaching is my Great debates in psychology module. Here I focus on topics where there is no academic consensus, such as consciousness and free will.

Research Overview
Symmetry is everywhere in the world, in bodies, molecules, galaxies and objects. Many animals are sensitive to visual symmetry and use it to guide adaptive behaviour. My research is all about the brain response to visual symmetry in humans. I routinely use EEG to measure a signal called the Sustained Posterior Negativity (SPN). This research program has revealed the conditions under which the brain responds to symmetry. Does it respond to symmetry all the time, whatever the participants task, or does it only do so sparingly, when symmetry is task relevant? We have conclusively shown that the retinal image is very robust, but the response to extra-retinal symmetry is fragile.

Our lab is also interested in new ways to achieve the scientific record. Publications are a 350-year-old medium, and the published record is neither complete nor reliable. We believe that future researchers will see their product as curated public databases (not simply a few snapshots and summary statistics in published articles). We have pioneered the new open science approach by compiling the complete Liverpool SPN catalogue on open science framework [Complete Liverpool SPN catalogue]. This is designed to meet the FAIR criteria (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). The complete Liverpool SPN catalogue hopefully provides a good example in our open science promotion work.
[Complete Liverpool SPN catalogue]