Professor Howard Bowman

Supervisor Details

Contact Details

School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham

Scientific Background

Research Interests

Professor Bowman applies the methods of Cognitive Neuroscience, especially EEG and Neural Modelling, to understanding a spectrum of Cognitive phenomena, including conscious perception, temporal attention and subliminal search. Much of his work focuses on verifying the simultaneous Type/ Serial Token theory of temporal attention and working memory encoding, which he developed with Brad Wyble.

Scientific Inspiration

I have two: Alan Turing and Francis Crick, because they took on the difficult questions.

Research Groups

Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics (CNCR)

Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Science and AI

Perception, Cognition and Action

Supervision Style

In three words or phrases: supportive, outcome-oriented, student-centred.

Provision of Training

I prefer to take responsibility for your technical training at first, leading to more independence later.

Progression Monitoring and Management

I am here for advice and guidance to help you reach the goals you set for yourself.

Communication

I am happy to discuss any issues that are impacting your ability to fulfil your potential or my/our expectations.

PhD Students can expect scheduled meetings with me:

In a group meeting

At least once per week

In year 1 of PhD study

At least once per week

In year 2 of PhD study

At least once per week

In year 3 of PhD study

At least once per week

These meetings will be a mixture of face to face or via video chat or telephone, and I am usually contactable for an instant response (if required) on every working day.

Working Patterns

The timing of work in my lab is completely flexible, and (other than attending pre-arranged meetings), I expect students to manage their own time.

Notice Period for Feedback

I need at least 1 week’s notice to provide feedback on written work of up to 5000 words.

MIBTP Project Details

Primary supervisor for:

Theoretical and Applied Studies of Conscious Perception: Neuroimaging Investigations using the Fringe-P3 Brain-Computer Interface

See the PhD Opportunities section to see if this project is currently open for applications via MIBTP.

Please Note: The main page lists projects via BBSRC Research Theme(s) quoted and then relevant Topic(s).

Theoretical and Applied Studies of Conscious Perception: Neuroimaging Investigations using the Fringe-P3 Brain-Computer Interface

Secondary Supervisor(s): Dr Damian Cruse

University of Registration: University of Birmingham

BBSRC Research Themes:

Understanding the Rules of Life (Neuroscience and Behaviour)

Project Outline

The question of what conscious perception is for remains largely unanswered. We have presented evidence that the subconscious brain is limited in its capacity to represent episodic information (A20,B14). We showed that the capacity to consciously perceive a stimulus does not benefit from repeating it, until it has been consciously perceived (A20). Repetition is a key episodic property, i.e. to know that a presentation of a stimulus is a repetition, the brain has to have a memory of a previous episode of experiencing the stimulus.

These characteristics of conscious perception also underlie the effectiveness of our Fringe-P3 brain-computer interface (BCI), which has been applied to a number of problems in forensics, e.g. deception detection (B14) and healthcare.

We now have behavioural evidence that a capacity of conscious perception is to lay down freely-recallable episodic memories of previous experiences. We are thus at a perfect stage to characterise the neural correlates that support this capacity. Accordingly, we are proposing a PhD to work on theoretical and/or practical uses of the Fringe-P3 BCI.

Characterising neural correlates, could employ fMRI, fNIRS, MEG or EEG (all of which are available to us). This would give a new way to identify the neural components that are specific to conscious processing, with relevance to debates concerning whether the neural correlates of conscious processing reside in the sensory processing pathways or at a later, brain-scale, stage. Oscillatory correlates of conscious processing & episodic memory formation are of particular interest (P18).

A20: Avilés, Bowman & Wyble (2020). On the limits of evidence accumulation of the preconscious percept. Cognition

B14: Bowman et al (2014). Countering countermeasures: detecting identity lies by detecting conscious breakthrough. PloS one

P18: Parish, Hanslmayr & Bowman (2018). The sync/desync model: How a synchronized hippocampus & a desynchronized neocortex code memories. JoNeurosci