Dr Angus Paton

I study the role visual and non-visual information plays at the earliest levels of visual perception.  

I am particularly interested in how humans perform spatial navigation tasks while distracted by daydreaming or mind-wandering. For example, we can drive along long stretches of road safely whilst simultaneously thinking about being in different places, performing different tasks, such as shopping, thinking about where we need to go in the shop to find bread, milk, etc. and visualising optimal routes between these items. How the brain handles vision and vision-like perception concurrently remains an open and interesting question, especially at different cortical layers of visual cortex. 

In my research I use 3T/7T fMRI and EEG (separately and concurrently) and diffusion tensor imaging.  

I program in Matlab and Python and use machine learning and brain network analysis methods. I am also interested in new statistical methods for answering these questions and have been exploring how a mutual information framework can benefit these types of analysis.  

I utilise virtual reality in my work and use Blender and Unity to create dynamic virtual environments.