Professor Robin Walker B.Sc. (Newcastle), Ph.D. (Durham) Department of Psychology Royal Holloway, University of London Egham Surrey TW20 OEX ENGLAND robin.walker@rhul.ac.uk +44 1784 443518 +44 1784 434347

Research Interests

Background:
Experimental studies designed to further our understanding of how the brain transforms a sensory input into a co-ordinated motor output ('sensorimotor transformation'). More specifically, my research centres on the human eye-movement (oculomotor) system.

Specific projects and collaborators:
My current research involves behavioural studies of saccadic eye movements in normal human subjects. We use a video-based eye-tracker (SR Instruments Eyelink II) to record eye movements performed under a range of different stimulus manipulations. Recent projects have investigated: the parallel programming of consecutive eye movements (with Eugene McSorley Reading), the distractor modulation of saccade trajectories (with Eugene McSorley, Reading and Patrick Haggard, UCL), the generation of voluntary and reflexive saccades, and multisensory visual- somatosensory (tactile) interaction effects (with Richard Amlot PhD student at RHUL). We plan to develop these studies using functional brain imaging. The overall aim is to further our understanding of how the network of cortical and sub-cortical regions function for the control of eye movements (called saccades).

Membership of professional bodies:
Experimental Psychology Society. British Neuropsychological Society. British Ocular motor group. Member of Centre for Vision and Visual Cognition at Durham

Publications
List no longer maintained on this page - please go here.

Recent grants
Leverhulme Trust (2001). Three year project grant (With Patrick Haggard, ICN) entitled: 'A study of oculomotor selection: choosing targets and inhibiting distractor'
Wellcome Trust (1998) A three year project entitled: 'Crossmodal links and interactions in saccade target selection.