AXNS Collective

Dr Dominic ffytche

Dominic ffytche is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist and Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. His research interest lies in disorders of visual perception, and he has published widely in the field. He also runs a Visual Perceptual Disorders Clinic at the Maudsley Hospital.

In a recent collaboration with Silvia Mercuriali and Fuel theatre, Dr ffytche recorded a podcast on the Eye for the Guardian Body Pods series.

Professor Glyn Humphreys

Glyn Humphreys is Watts Professor and Head of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. Glyn’s research is into the neuropsychology of vision and attention. He has been awarded the British Psychological Society’s Spearman medal, its President’s Award and its Cognitive Psychology prizes. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Academy of Social Science, the Royal Society of Medicine and the British Academy. He is a former President of the Experimental Psychology Society and is currently President of the British Neuropsychology Society.

Dr Richard Wingate

Richard Wingate is a lecturer and principal investigator at the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, KCL. In addition to basic biomedical research Richard is involved in a number of educational research projects that examine researcher-led teaching in Higher Education. He is the scientific advisor for the current “Brains” exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, is a co-organiser of the Between exhibition at the Inigo Rooms and is a member of the Arts Awards panel at the Wellcome Trust.

Prof Simon Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) in Cambridge and Director of CLASS (Cambridge Lifespan Asperger Syndrome Service), a clinic for adults with suspected AS. His current research interest lies in testing the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism at the neural, endocrine and genetic levels.

He is the author of a number of books such as Mindblindness (1995), The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (2003), and has edited various of scholarly anthologies, including Understanding Other Minds (1993, 2001), The Maladapted Mind (1997) and Synaesthesia (1997). He has been awarded prizes from the American Psychological Association, the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), and the British Psychological Society (BPS) for his research into autism.

Prof Simon Baron-Cohen

Prof Charles Spence

Professor Spence’s is the head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory based at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University. He is interested in perception and the integration of information from the different senses, focusing on improving the design of multisensory foods, products and interfaces for the future. Dr Spence has been awarded the 10th Experimental Psychology Society Prize, the British Psychology Society: Cognitive Section Award, the Paul Bertelson Award, (Young European Cognitive Psychologist of the Year), and, most recently, the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, not to mention the 2008 IG Nobel prize for nutrition, for his groundbreaking work on the ‘sonic crisp’!

Dr Megan Dowie

Megan is the Girdlers’ New Zealand HRC Postdoctoral Fellow working at the Medical Research Council Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Oxford. Her current research focuses on the electron microscopic analysis of populations of neurons in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, and she is also currently working with researchers at the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre. Megan has also established a collaborative project with the new Masters in Art and Science at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London; the recent exhibition at the Old Fire Station Gallery in October, A Nervous Encounter, featured the culmination of the student’s work in response to their residency at the basal ganglia research lab.

Dr Grant Gillett

Dr Gillett is a consultant Neurosurgeon and Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His interests centre on philosophy of mind and medical ethics, and is the author of a number of books including The Discursive Mind and The Mind and its Discontents.

Dr Klaus Podoll

Dr Podoll is a senior physician at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at the University Hospital Aachen at RWTH Aachen University. He has written and coauthored numerous medical articles, book chapters, and three books on Migraine Art. Coeditor of the Migraine Aura Foundation Web site, his current scientific interests focus on the neuropsychology and neuroaesthetics of migraine aura, including the rare variety of persistent aura.

Dr Sebastian Crutch

Sebastian Crutch is an Alzheimer’s Research UK Senior Research Fellow and clinical psychologist working in the Dementia Research Centre at the UCL Institute of Neurology. His work focuses on the neuropsychology of young onset and atypical forms of neurodegenerative disease, with particular interests in perception, conceptual knowledge and dyslexia. He was awarded the 2012 British Neuropsychology Society’s Elizabeth Warrington Prize, and runs the Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) Support Group at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery which provides information and advice for people experiencing the progressive deterioration of their visual world.

Luke Jerram

Luke Jerram’s multidisciplinary practice involves the creation of sculptures,installations, live arts projects and gifts. Living in the UK but working internationally since his career began in 1997, Jerram has created a number of extraordinary art projects which have excited and inspired people around the globe. He is currently Visiting Senior Research Fellow at CFPR, University of West of England. Jerram’s ongoing research of perception is fueled by the fact that he is colour-blind. He studies the qualities of space and perception in extreme locations, from the freezing forests of lapland to the sand dunes of the Sahara desert. New ways of seeing and new artworks emerge from these research field trips. Works such as’Retinal Memory Volume’, Sky Orchestra and his Glass Microbiology have emerged from Jerram exploring the edges of perception. Published by The Watershed, ’Art in Mind’ is a book written by Jerram that tracks much of his perceptual research.