Matt Roser

Teaching interests
Cognitive neuropsychology, biopsychology, cerebral asymmetry and interaction, perception, cognition and attention.

My office hours are Tuesday and Thursday 10-11am.
 

Research interests

Research in the Laterality Lab is aimed at establishing how perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes are integrated between the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain. This is undertaken using a variety of methods including studying patients in whom the hemispheres have been surgically separated (a callosotomy or split brain), functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and event-related potentials (ERP).

Recently my colleagues and I have concentrated on determining how, and where in the brain, the processes that allow us to make sense of a constantly changing physical world occur. Our research suggests that what we think of as quite high-level concepts such as causality and physical plausibility involve low-level perceptual and memory processes. Moreover, the two cerebral hemispheres make different contributions to this type of conceptual knowledge.

Current Research:

To better understand change to interhemispheric interaction and cerebral laterality with age we are investigating the relationship between age-related change to brain microstructural connectivity, functional lateralization, and cognitive performance. The central aim of this research is to determine whether individual differences in age-related cognitive decline are reflected in functional reorganization in the brain, and whether these changes are mediated by the degree of structural preservation. This project will help us better understand why some people experience greater cognitive decline with age than do others.

To extend our studies of how the two cerebral hemispheres contribute to higher cognition we are running a combined fMRI and DTI investigation of reasoning in people with autism or Asperger syndrome. The reasoning task involves integrating information to reach a conclusion. This process draws upon widely-distributed brain networks, the connectivity of which may be disturbed in autism. Converging evidence from several brain-imaging techniques can tell us how these networks differ in the normal and the autistic brain.

Other ongoing studies include an event-related potential investigation of the spatial-correspondence hypothesis of attentional orienting and a combined functional MRI and diffusion-tensor imaging investigation of interhemispheric interaction in motor responses to visual stimuli.

Click the image below to visit a site with more details about my research.

UoP Research group membership

Publications

Linnet, E. & Roser, M.E. (in press). Age-related differences in interhemispheric visuo-motor integration measured by the redundant target effect. Psychology and Aging.

Roser, M.E., Corballis, M.C., Jansari, A., Fulford, J., Benattayallah, A, and Adams, W.M. (in press). Bilateral redundancy gain and callosal integrity in a man with callosal lipoma: a diffusion-tensor imaging study. Neurocase.

Lambert, A.J., Marrett, N.E., & Roser, M.E., Kentridge, R.A., Milner A. D., & de-Wit, L. (2011). Testing the dorsal stream attention hypothesis: Electrophysiological correlates and the effects of ventral stream damage. Visual Cognition, 19(9), 1089-1121.

Roser, M.E., Fiser, J., Aslin, R.N., & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2011). Right hemisphere dominance in visual statistical learning. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 5: 1088-1099.

Fugelsang, J., Roser, M. (2010). On the Interaction Between Stimulus Features and Context in the Perception of Causality. The Open Psychology Journal, 3, 91-96.

Roser, M.E., Fugelsang, J., Handy, T.C., Dunbar, K.N., & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2009). Representations of physical plausibility revealed by event-related potentials. NeuroReport, 20, 1081-1086.

Roser, M.E. & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2009). Split-Brain Patients. In: Squire LR (ed.) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, volume 9, pp. 351-356. Oxford: Academic Press.

Roser, M.E. & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2006). The interpreter in human psychology, in: T. M. Preuss & J.H. Kaas (Eds.), The Evolution of Primate Nervous Systems. Academic Press: Oxford. pp. 503-508.

Lambert, A., Roser, M.E., Wells, I., & Heffer, C. (2006). The spatial correspondence hypothesis and orienting in response to central and peripheral spatial cues. Visual Cognition, 13, 65-88.

Roser, M.E., Fugelsang, J.A., Dunbar, K.N., Corballis, P.M., & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2005). Dissociating causal perception and causal inference in the brain. Neuropsychology, 19, 591-602.

Fugelsang, J.A., Roser, M.E., Corballis, P.M., Gazzaniga, M.S., & Dunbar, K.N. (2005). Brain mechanisms underlying perceptual causality. Cognitive Brain Research, 24, 41-47.

Roser, M.E. & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2004). Automatic brains: Interpretive minds. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 56-59. (reprinted in the Current Directions in Cognitive Science Reader, 2005. Pearson Prentice Hall).

Roser, M. & Corballis, M.C. (2003). Interhemispheric neural summation in the split brain: effects of stimulus colour and task. Neuropsychologia, 41, 830-846.

Roser, M. & Corballis, M.C. (2002). Interhemispheric neural summation in the split brain with symmetrical and asymmetrical displays. Neuropsychologia, 40, 1300-1312.

Lambert, A. & Roser, M. (2001). Effects of bilateral colour cues on visual orienting: Revisiting William James' 'derived attention'. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 30, 1, 16-22.

Reports & invited lectures
Invited Speaker: 2010

University of Exeter
University of Aberdeen
University of Leicester
 

Additional information

Office hours

Tuesday 10-11am

Thursday 10-11am

Links
 
A website with further descriptions of my research and teaching and papers available for download.