Dr Ellen Poliakoff

Photograph of Ellen Poliakoff

Senior Lecturer

Research

I am interested in the overlap between cognition and motor processes, and the brain mechanisms underlying them; in particular, the relationship between eye movements and attention and cognitive changes in Parkinson’s disease. I am also interested in tactile and cross-modal attention. I am co-director of the BEAM (Body Eyes and Movement) lab with Dr Emma Gowen http://beamlab.lab.ls.manchester.ac.uk/

Parkinson’s disease and cognition: My previous research suggests that patients with Parkinson’s disease find stimuli in their environment more attention grabbing than do healthy subjects of the same age. More recently, I have investigated how patients are affected by seeing action-relevant graspable objects and the sight of other people moving, in collaboration with Professor Steven Tipper and is supported by the Parkinson’s Disease Society. I am currently involved in a project about how Parkinson's Disease affects everyday cognition, such as memory and attention lapses and a project investigating the potential benefits of gym training on Parkinson's Disease, supported by the Parkinson's Disease Society and in collaboration with Bolton Arena.

Attention, the body and medically unexplained symptoms: I am interested in how we pay attention to touch and the body. I am collaborating with Dr Richard Brown and Dr Donna Lloyd to investigate how threat affects attention to the body and whether this is affected in patients with medically unexplained symptoms.

Smooth eye movements and memory for velocity: Following on from work on anticipatory smooth pursuit eye movements that I carried out with Professor Graham Barnes, I am currently working with Dr Andrew Stewart on a project investigating memory and priming of the velocity of moving objects.

Ageing, attention and multisensory integration: Integrating information from different modalities (vision, hearing, touch) is of fundamental importance in everyday life. I have recently begun investigating how visuotactile processes are affected in old age.

I am also Public Engagement Officer for Psychological Sciences. I have co-organised many events involving hands-on activities about the brain and senses for the public at different venues, from the Manchester Museum to the Arndale.

Teaching

  • PSYC10302 Perception
  • PSYC20402 Cognitive Neuroscience
  • PSYC30141 The Body in the Brain
  • PSYC60302 Advanced Statistics Course (MRes)
  • I am the Psychology course coordinator for the BSc(hons) Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology degree

Biography

I completed my BSc in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Manchester in June 1998. I carried out my PhD (‘Tactile Spatial Attention and Parkinson’s Disease’) at the University of Manchester , which I completed in 2002. I then worked for 18 months as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Professor Graham Barnes at UMIST, before taking up a lectureship at the School of Psychological Sciences in September 2003. I became a senior lecturer in 2010.

Selected publications

2011

  • Cleary RA, Poliakoff E, Galpin A, Dick JPR, Holler J. (2011). An investigation of co-speech gesture production during action description in Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 17, 753-756. eScholarID:128736 | DOI:10.1016/j.parkreldis.2011.08.001
  • Galpin A, Tipper SP, Dick J, Poliakoff E. (2011). Object affordance and spatial compatibility effects in Parkinson's disease. Cortex, 47, 332-341. eScholarID:76318 | DOI:doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2010.01.011
  • Makin AJ, Poliakoff E. (2011). Do common systems control eye movements and motion extrapolation? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 1327-1343. eScholarID:112745 | DOI:DOI:10.1080/17470218.2010.548562
  • Miles E, Brown R, Poliakoff E. (2011). Investigating the nature and time-course of the modality shift effect between vision and touch. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 871-888. eScholarID:93773 | DOI:DOI:10.1080/17470218.2010.514054

2010

  • Brown RJ, Danquah AN, Miles E, Holmes E, Poliakoff E. (2010). Attention to the body in non-clinical somatoform dissociators depends on emotional state. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 69, 249-257. eScholarID:79934 | DOI:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2010.04.010
  • Mirams L, Poliakoff E, Brown RJ, Lloyd DM. (2010). Vision of the body increases interference on the somatic signal detection task. Experimental Brain Research, 202, 787–794. eScholarID:79440 | DOI:10.1007/s00221-010-2185-7
  • Poliakoff E, Galpin A, Dick J, Tipper SP. (2010). Does Parkinson's disease affect judgments about another person's action? Experimental Brain Research, 204, 327-333. eScholarID:76313 | DOI:10.1007/s00221-009-1976-1
  • Thompson JC, Poliakoff E, Sollom AC, Howard E, Craufurd D, Snowden JS. (2010). Automaticity and attention in Huntington's disease: when two hands are not better than one. Neuropsychologia, 48, 171-178. eScholarID:76312 | DOI:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.09.002

2009

  • Makin A, Poliakoff E, El-Deredy W. (2009). Tracking visible and occluded targets: changes in event related potentials during motion extrapolation. Neuropsychologia, 47( 4), eScholarID:1d19042 | DOI:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.01.010
  • Makin A, Stewart AJ, Poliakoff E. (2009). Typical object velocity influences motion extrapolation. Experimental Brain Research, 193, eScholarID:1d18185 | DOI:10.1007/s00221-008-1678-0

2008

  • Lloyd D, Mason L, Brown RJ, Poliakoff E. (2008). Development of a paradigm for measuring somatic disturbance in clinical populations with medically unexplained symptoms. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 64( 1), eScholarID:1d18407 | DOI:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2007.06.004
  • Miles E, Poliakoff E, Brown RJ. (2008). Investigating the time course of tactile reflexive attention using a non-spatial discrimination task. Acta Psychol (Amst), 128( 2), eScholarID:1d18412 | DOI:10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.12.010
  • Poliakoff E, James Smith-Spark. (2008). Everyday cognitive failures and memory problems in Parkinson's patients without dementia. Brain and Cognition, 67, 340-350. eScholarID:1d16970 | DOI:10.1016/j.bandc.2008.02.004

2007

  • Brown RJ, Poliakoff E, Kirkman M. (2007). Somatoform dissociation and somatosensory amplification are differentially associated with attention to the tactile modality following exposure to body-related stimuli. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 62, eScholarID:1d13401 | DOI:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2006.08.008
  • Poliakoff E, Galpin AJ, Jeremy Dick, Peter Moore, Steven P Tipper. (2007). The effect of viewing graspable objects and actions in Parkinson's Disease. NeuroReport, 28, 483-487. eScholarID:1d13441
  • Poliakoff E, Miles E, Li X, Blanchette I. (2007). The effect of visual threat on spatial attention to touch. Cognition, 102, 405-414. eScholarID:1d12645 | DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.01.006

2006

  • Poliakoff E, Ashworth S, Lowe C, Spence C. (2006). Vision and touch in ageing: Crossmodal selective attention and visuotactile spatial interactions. Neuropsychologia, 44, 507-517. eScholarID:1d11052 | DOI:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.07.004

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