Stephen Johnston

I obtained a Bachelor's degree from Keele University in Psychology and Astrophysics before going on to get a PhD in Mathematical Physics from Coventry University. After my PhD I worked in the School of Psychology, Bangor for Dr Charles Leek where my background in Mathematics and Psychology fit snugly the emerging field of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). I then went on to complete a futher post-doctoral positon with Kim Shaprio at Bangor, before moving to a lectureship at Brunel University. My principle research interests are object recognition and emotion. In particular, my object recognition interests are in determining the processes involved in the recognition of mis-oriented objects and the form of the representations that objects have in memory. My emotion research involves using 'neurofeedback' to uncover the neural correlates of mood control. Neurofeedback requires the use of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner at the School of Psychology to determine what the activity level is in those regions of the brain that are involved in emotion processing and then showing that activity to participants so that they may attempt to control it.

Research Interests

Publications

Journal Papers

(2012) Leek, EC., Cristino, F., Conlan, LI., Arnold, PJ., Patterson, C., Rodriguez, E. and Johnston, SJ., Eye movement patterns during the recognition of three-dimensional objects: Preferential fixation of concave surface curvature minima, Journal of Vision 12 (1) : 7

(2012) Johnston, SJ., Shapiro, KL. and Linden, DEJ., Functional imaging reveals working memory and attention interact to produce the attentional blink, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

(2011) Subramanian, L., Hindle, JV., Johnston, S., Roberts, MV., Goebel, R. and Linden, D., Real-time fMRI neurofeedback for treatment of Parkinson's disease, Journal of Neuroscience

(2010) Kuncheva, LI., Rodriguez, JJ., Plumpton, CO., Linden, DE. and Johnston, SJ., Random subspace ensembles for FMRI classification, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 29 (2) : 531- 542

(2010) Johnston, SJ., Boehm, SG., Healy, D., Goebel, R. and Linden, DEJ., Neurofeedback: A promising tool for the self-regulation of emotion networks, Neuroimage 49 (1) : 1066- 1072

(2010) Plumpton, CO., Kuncheva, LI., Linden, DEJ. and Johnston, SJ., On-line fMRI data classification using linear and ensemble classifiers, Proceedings - International Conference on Pattern Recognition 4312- 4315

(2009) Johnston, SJ. and Leek, EC., Fixation Region Overlap: A quantitative method for the analysis of fixational eye movement patterns, Journal of Eye Movement Research 1 (3) : 1- 12

(2009) Leek, EC. and Johnston, SJ., Correspondence: Functional specialization in the supplementary motor complex, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10 (1) : 78-

(2008) Jackson, MC., Wolf, C., Johnston, SJ., Raymond, JE. and Linden, DE., Neural correlates of enhanced visual short-term memory for angry faces: an FMRI study, PLoS One 3 (10) : e3536 Download publication

(2007) Johnston, SJ., Shapiro, KL., Vogels, W. and Roberts, NJ., Imaging the attentional blink: perceptual versus attentional limitations, Neuroreport 18 (14) : 1475- 1478

(2007) Shapiro, KL., Johnston, SJ., Vogels, W., Zaman, A. and Roberts, N., Increased functional magnetic resonance imaging activity during nonconscious perception in the attentional blink, Neuroreport 18 (4) : 341- 345

(2006) Leek, EC. and Johnston, SJ., A polarity effect in misoriented object recognition: The role of polar features in the computation of orientation-invariant shape representations, Visual Cognition 13 (5) : 573- 600

(2006) Arend, I., Johnston, S. and Shapiro, KL., Task-irrelevant visual motion and flicker attenuate the attentional blink, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13 (4) : 600- 607

(2005) Shapiro, KL., Arend, I. and Johnston, SJ., Illusory motion attenuates attentional blink, Perception 34 98- 98

(2005) Johnston, SJ., Shapiro, KL., Roberts, N. and Zaman, A., Working memory and the attentional blink, Perception 34 182- 183

(2004) Johnston, S., Leek, EC., Atherton, CJ., Thacker, N. and Jackson, A., Functional contribution of medial premotor cortex to visuo-spatial transformation in humans, Neuroscience Letters 355 209- 212