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Dr. Mark Harwood

Lecturer

Psychology

    Mark teaches on the BSc and MSc programmes in research methods and Cognitive Psychology. He did his undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, before completing his Developmental Psychology PhD at UCL, and going on to postdoctoral research in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology in New York.



    Overview

    Vision is a highly active process: what we see is strongly determined by where we direct our eyes, and we move our eyes consciously or unconsciously several times a second. Eye movements provide an excellent 'window to the brain', revealing principles of how the brain makes decisions, learns from mistakes, and generates our visual perception of the world.

    My research is quantitative, precisely measuring things like the speed, reaction time and accuracy of eye movements as people look at moving or stationary parts of the visual scene.  From these, one can infer the underlying neural processes; or infer pathologies in these measures in developmental and neurodegenerative diseases.





    Funded by

    Research

    De Vries, J.P., Azadi, R., & Harwood, M.R. (2016). The saccadic size-latency phenomenon explored: Proximal target size is a determining factor in the saccade latency. Vision Research, 129, 87-97.

    Azadi, R. & Harwood, M.R. (2014). Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation. Journal of Neurophysiology, 111(11): 2307-19.

    Gray, M., Blangero, A., Herman, J.P., Wallman, J., Harwood, M.R. (2014). Adaptation of naturally paced saccades. Journal of Neurophysiology, 111(11): 2343:54.

    Khan, A., McFadden, S., Harwood, M.R., Wallman, J., (2014). Salient distractors can induce saccade adaptation. Journal of Ophthalmology, 585792. doi: 10.1155/2014/585792

    Herman, J.P., Blangero, A., Madelain, L., Khan, A., Harwood, M.R. (2013). Saccade adaptation as a model of flexible and general motor learning. Experimental Eye Research, 114: 6-15.

    Madelain, L., Herman, J.P., Harwood, M.R. (2013). Saccade adaptation goes for the goal. Journal of Vision; 13(4)

    Belyusar, D., Snyder, A.C., Frey, H.P., Harwood, M.R., Wallman, J., Foxe, J.J. (2013). Oscillatory alpha-band suppression mechanisms during the rapid attentional shifts required to perform an anti-saccade task. Neuroimage, 65, 395-407.

    Madelain, L., Harwood, M. R., Herman, J. P., & Wallman, J. (2010). Saccade adaptation is unhampered by distractors. Journal of Vision 10(12): 29.

    Herman, J.P., Harwood, M.R., & Wallman, J. (2009). Saccade adaptation specific to visual context. Journal of Neurophsiology, 46(2), 131-139.

    Harwood, M.R. and Herman, J.P. (2008). Optimally straight and optimally curved saccades. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(30): 7455-7457.

    Harwood, M. R., Madelain, L., Krauzlis, R. J., & Wallman, J. (2008). The spatial scale of attention strongly modulates saccade latencies. J Neurophysiol, 99(4), 1743-1757.

    Garbutt S, Harwood, M.R., Harris CM. (2006). Infant Saccades are not slow. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology. 2006 Aug;48(8):662-667

    Harris CM., Harwood, M.R. (2005). Boundary conditions in human movement I: Constraining constraints.Proc 2nd IASTED Int Conference on Biomedical Engineering. 629-633.

    Harwood, M.R., Harris CM. (2005). Boundary conditions in human movement II: The Fourier approach. Proc 2nd IASTED Int Conference on Biomedical Engineering. 634-637.

    Harris CM., Harwood, M.R.(2005). Boundary conditions in human movement III: Fourier analysis of reaching movements. Proc 2nd IASTED Int Conference on Biomedical Engineering. 638-640.

    Garbutt S, Riley DE, Kumar AN, Han Y, Harwood, M.R., Leigh RJ. (2004). Abnormalities of optokinetic nystagmus in progressive supranuclear palsy. J Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 75(10): 1386-94.

    Garbutt S, Harwood M.R., Kumar A.N., Han Y.H., Leigh R.J. (2003). Evaluating small eye movements in patients with saccadic palsies. Annals NY Academy of Sciences, 1004:337-346.

    Garbutt S, Han Y, Kumar A.N., Harwood M, Rahman R, Leigh R.J. (2003). Disorders of vertical optokinetic nystagmus in patients with ocular misalignment. Vision Research, 43(3), 347-357.

    Garbutt S, Han Y, Kumar A.N., Harwood M, Harris C.M., Leigh R.J. (2003). Vertical optokinetic nystagmus and saccades in normal human subjects. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2003 Sep;44(9):3833-41.

    Harwood, M.R. & Harris, C.M. (2002). Time-optimality and the spectral overlap of saccadic eye movements. Annals NY Academy of Sciences, 956, 414-417.

    Garbutt S., Harwood, M.R. & Harris, C.M. (2002). Anti-compensatory eye position (“contraversion”) in optokinetic nystagmus. Annals NY Academy of Sciences, 956, 414-417.

    Garbutt S, Harwood M.R., & Harris, C.M. (2001). Comparison of the main sequence of reflexive saccades and the quick phases of optokinetic nystagmus. British Journal of Ophthalmology, 85(12), 1477-1483.

    Harwood, M.R., Mezey, L.E., & Harris, C. M. (1999). The spectral main sequence of human saccades. Journal of Neuroscience, 19(20), 9098-9106.

    Publications

    Mark won a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, and has received National Institute of Health (USA), and National Science Foundation funding as Principal, or Co-Investigator.

    Funding

    PY5201 Researching Psychological Worlds 2 (Quantitative Module Leader)

    PY4101 Researching Psychological Worlds 1

    MSc Psychology

    GC7405 Research Methods and Disseratation (MSc Occupational and Business Psychology)

    Teaching