Dr Stephen Welbourne BA MSc PhD

Ultimately I am interested in how the brain works. More specifically my current research involves the intersection of a number of related topics and methodologies: connectionism; EEG/MEG; tractography reading; neural plasticity and recovery from brain damage. Most of my work is based on generating computer simulations of human behaviour using models based on parallel distributed processing (PDP). I am particularly interested in how plasticity within these models can account for the kind of recovery trajectories that one observes in populations of patients after brain injury. One interesting aspect of this work is that when the models are allowed to recover after being damaged they begin to display the kind of  performance dissociations often encountered in chronic stage patients. In my PhD I harnessed this phenomenon to produce a single PDP model of reading that could account for all of the central dyslexias.

Keywords

PDP connectionism reading neural networks recovery plasticity tractography coherence analysis

2nd Year - PSYC20402 Introduction to Neural Networks

3rd Year -  PSYC32161  21st Century Neuropsychology

MSc -  Neural Network Workshop

I graduated from Oxford University in 1989 with a BA (Hons) in Physics. For the next 12 years I worked in the IT industry: initially as a computer programmer and later as a senior systems analyst. In 2000 I realised that there was a limit to how much job satisfaction could be gained from devising ever more efficient invoicing techniques and enrolled full time on an MSc Psychology course at Bolton Institute (now University). My initial intention had been to train as a clinical psychologist, but I caught the research bug whilst studying for my MSc. I graduated from Bolton in 2002 with a distinction, whereupon I registered for a full time PhD at Manchester University, which I completed in December 2005. Following 8 months of postdoc work I was appointed  as a lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience.

BA (1989 - Physics   - Oxford)
MSc (2002 - Psychology - Bolton - awarded with distinction)
PhD (2005 - Psychology - Manchester)

Dr. Wael El Deredy - University of Manchester

Prof. Steve Furber - University of Manchester

Dr. Beth Jefferies - University of York

Dr. James Keidel - University of Manchester

Prof. Matthew Lambon Ralph - University of Manchester

Prof Jay McClelland - Stanford University

Professor Geoff Parker- University of Manchester

Dr. Gorana Pobric - University of Manchester

Miss Jennifer Read - University of Manchester

Dr. Karen Sage - University of Manchester

Mr Mark Drakesmith (PhD student)

Miss Yaning Chang (PhD student)