- B207, 22 Portland Square, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA
- +44 1752 584852
- matt.roser@plymouth.ac.uk
Profiles
Dr Matt Roser
Lecturer in Psychology
School of Psychology (Faculty of Health)
Dr Matt Roser can be contacted through arrangement with our Press Office, to speak to the media on these areas of expertise.
- Brain hemispheres – asymmetry
- Neuropsychology of reasoning
- Brain imaging
- Experimental methods
- Quantitative research
Email publicrelations@plymouth.ac.uk to enquire.
Biography
Biography
Qualifications
I studied for a Ph.D with Professor Michael Corballis at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. My Ph.D investigated interhemispheric interaction in callosotomised (split-brain) patients and people with agenesis of the corpus callosum.
In 2002 I moved to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, to work with Professor Michael Gazzaniga. While I was a Research Assistant Professor at Dartmouth I continued to test split-brain patients and broadened my research to incorporate functional MRI, electroencephalography, and diffusion-tensor imaging.
I moved to the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth in 2006.
More information about my research.
My office hours for Semester 2 are Monday and Tuesday 10-11am. Email me if you cannot make these times and wish to make an appointment.
In 2002 I moved to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, to work with Professor Michael Gazzaniga. While I was a Research Assistant Professor at Dartmouth I continued to test split-brain patients and broadened my research to incorporate functional MRI, electroencephalography, and diffusion-tensor imaging.
I moved to the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth in 2006.
More information about my research.
My office hours for Semester 2 are Monday and Tuesday 10-11am. Email me if you cannot make these times and wish to make an appointment.
Professional membership
Association for Psychological Science (The American Psychological Society)
Cognitive Neuroscience Society
Cognitive Neuroscience Society
Teaching
Teaching
Teaching interests
Cognitive neuropsychology, biopsychology, cerebral asymmetry and interaction, perception, cognition and attention.
Research
Research
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.
Beginning in August 2012 we embarked on a three-year project funded by the ESRC (RES-062-23-3285, £302,000) to investigate the neuropsychology of reasoning. This major project integrates evidence from several complementary neuropsychological techniques. 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. We are using behavioural studies and brain imaging to investigate how age affects anatomical connectivity between the two cerebral hemispheres, and how this impacts upon behaviour. Finally, we are also using combined functional MRI and diffusion-tensor imaging to investigate interhemispheric interaction in motor responses to visual stimuli.
More information about my research.
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.
Beginning in August 2012 we embarked on a three-year project funded by the ESRC (RES-062-23-3285, £302,000) to investigate the neuropsychology of reasoning. This major project integrates evidence from several complementary neuropsychological techniques. 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. We are using behavioural studies and brain imaging to investigate how age affects anatomical connectivity between the two cerebral hemispheres, and how this impacts upon behaviour. Finally, we are also using combined functional MRI and diffusion-tensor imaging to investigate interhemispheric interaction in motor responses to visual stimuli.
More information about my research.
Research groups
Grants & contracts
Alzheimer's Research UK- South West Development grant (£2,800). Normal ageing and the precursors of dementia investigated using brain imaging. ARUK-SW brain database.
£374,852 (ESRC): Dual processes in reasoning: A neuropsychological study of the role of working memory. (Matt Roser, Principal Investigator)
British Academy Research GrantsSG-47678. (£ 7,000)
The spatial-correspondence hypothesis – an ERP investigation.
Role: Primary Investigator.
National Institutes of Health Grant 2 R01 NS031443-10A2.
Neurologic & Cognitive Analysis of Callosotomy Patients.
Role: Investigator. (Primary Investigator: Gazzaniga, M.S.)
£374,852 (ESRC): Dual processes in reasoning: A neuropsychological study of the role of working memory. (Matt Roser, Principal Investigator)
British Academy Research GrantsSG-47678. (£ 7,000)
The spatial-correspondence hypothesis – an ERP investigation.
Role: Primary Investigator.
National Institutes of Health Grant 2 R01 NS031443-10A2.
Neurologic & Cognitive Analysis of Callosotomy Patients.
Role: Investigator. (Primary Investigator: Gazzaniga, M.S.)
Publications
Publications
Key publications
Key publications are highlighted
Journals
Articles
(2022) 'Anhedonia reduction correlates with increased ventral caudate connectivity with superior frontal gyrus in depression' Journal of Psychiatric Research 151, 286-290 , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Motivational differences in unipolar and bipolar depression, manic bipolar, acute and stable phase schizophrenia' Journal of Affective Disorders 283, 254-261 , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Neural Signatures of Spatial Statistical Learning: Characterizing the Extraction of Structure from Complex Visual Scenes' Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 29, (12) 1963-1976 , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Understanding the Goals of Everyday Instrumental Actions Is Primarily Linked to Object, Not Motor-Kinematic, Information: Evidence from fMRI' PLOS ONE 12, (1) e0169700-e0169700 , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Enhanced visual statistical learning in adults with autism' Neuropsychology 29, (2) 163-172 , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Investigating reasoning with multiple integrated neuroscientific methods' Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9, , DOI Open access
(2014) 'Dynamic shifts in connectivity between frontal, occipital, hippocampal and striatal regions characterize statistical learning of spatial patterns' Journal of Vision 14, (10) 955-955 , DOI
(2014) 'Modeling causal conditional reasoning data using SDT: caveats and new insights' Front Psychol 5, , DOI Open access
(2012) 'Prospect theory does not describe the feedback-related negativity value function' Psychophysiology 49, (12) 1533-1544 , DOI Open access
(2012) 'Age-Related Differences in Interhemispheric Visuomotor Integration Measured by the Redundant Target Effect' PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING 27, (2) 399-409 , DOI Open access
(2011) 'Testing the dorsal stream attention hypothesis: Electrophysiological correlates and the effects of ventral stream damage' VISUAL COGNITION 19, (9) 1089-1121 , DOI Open access
(2011) 'Bilateral redundancy gain and callosal integrity in a man with callosal lipoma: a diffusion-tensor imaging study' Neurocase 18, (3) 185-198 Publisher Site , DOI Open access
(2011) 'Right hemisphere dominance in visual statistical learning' Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, (5) 1088-1099 , DOI Open access
(2010) 'On the Interaction Between Stimulus Features and Context in the Perception of Causality~!2009-09-10~!2009-12-30~!2010-07-13~!' The Open Psychology Journal 3, (2) 91-96 , DOI
(2010) 'On the Interaction Between Stimulus Features and Context in the
Perception of Causality' The Open Psychology Journal 3, 91-96
(2006) 'The spatial correspondence hypothesis and orienting in response to central and peripheral spatial cues' Visual Cognition 13, (1) 65-88
(2005) 'Right hemisphere processes dominate the initial phase of visual statistical feature-learning' Journal of Vision 5, (8) 1055-1055 , DOI
(2005) 'Brain mechanisms underlying perceptual causality' Cognitive Brain Research 24 (1), 41-47 , DOI
(2005) 'Dissociating processes supporting causal perception and causal inference in the brain' Neuropsychology 19, (5) 591-602
(2005) 'Orienting in response to symmetric and asymmetric spatial precues: Implications for the distinction between endogenous and exogenous orienting' Perception 34, 185-185
(2005) 'Examining how task set modulates impressions of causality' Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 169-169
(2005) 'Neuroanatomical correlates of statistical visual feature learning' Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 140-140
(2004) 'Automatic brains - Interpretive minds' Current Directions in Psychological Science 13, (2) 56-59
(2003) 'Interhemispheric neural summation in the split brain: effects of stimulus colour and task' Neuropsychologia 41 (7), 830-846 , DOI
(2002) 'Interhemispheric neural summation in the split brain with symmetrical and asymmetrical displays' Neuropsychologia 40, (8) 1300-1312
(2001) 'Effects of bilateral colour cues on visual orienting: Revisiting William James' 'derived attention'' New Zealand Journal of Psychology 30, (1) 16-22
'Representations of physical plausibility revealed by event-related potentials' Neuroreport 20, (12) 1081-1086
Chapters
(2007) '4.33 The Interpreter in Human Psychology' Evolution of Nervous Systems Elsevier 503-508 , DOI
(2006) 'The interpreter in human psychology' in Preuss TM; Kaas JH The Evolution of Primate Nervous Systems, Volume 4 Academic Press: Oxford. 503-508
'Split-Brain Patients' in Squire LR Encyclopedia of Neuroscience Oxford Academic Press 351-356
Personal
Personal
Additional information
Links
A websitewith further descriptions of my research and teaching and papers available for download.