Bartholomew Quinn
PhD Student

Profile

Biography

I graduated from Durham University with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology in 2020 while working as a research assistant with Prof. Holger Wiese, examining the neural correlates associated with personally familiar face recognition. This research engaged my own interest in the field, leading to my completion of an MRes supervised by Prof. Wiese. During this project, I examined the role of the eye-region in the holistic binding of facial features during recognition processing tasks using EEG and psychophysical measures. My continued interest in facial processing led me to pursue a PhD at the University of York, with particular interest in the integration of initially divided visual information across brain hemispheres, with a focus on face recognition.

Career

• PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of York (UK), 2021 – present.
• MRes in Psychology, Durham University (UK), 2020 – 2021.
• Research Assistant for Prof. Holger Wiese, Durham University (UK), 2018 – 2019.
• BSc (Hons) in Psychology, Durham University (UK), 2017 – 2020.

Departmental roles

• Graduate Teaching Assistant, 2021 – present.
• ECR Co-Chair 2022 – 2023.

Research

Overview

The Importance of Interhemispheric Connectivity in the Perception of Faces

Projects

Typical visual attendance on a face splits it into separate left and right visual fields, each of which is initially projected to a different hemisphere. My research project focuses on how these initially divided halves are integrated into holistic wholes, known to be used for facial processing.

In particular, I aim to demonstrate a substantial role of interhemispheric connectivity within regions specialised for category-selective visual processing in the brain using fMRI. Additionally, I hope to understand where in the facial processing stream this integration of face halves occurs using psychophysical measures in concert with fMRI. Finally, I am interested in understanding if greater understanding of our own early processing of facial halves mirrors that of Deep Convoluted Neural Networks, specialised for extracting identity information for faces (e.g., VGGFace), and if further understanding of our own and computational processing mechanisms can be gained from this comparison.  

Research group(s)

• University of York FaceLab

Grants

• Rosemary Stevenson Memorial Prize, 2020 (Durham University)

Collaborators

• Prof. Tim Andrews (University of York)
• Prof. Mike Burton (University of York)

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Advanced Research Methods
• Perception and Cognition 1 & 2
• Brain and Behaviour 1 & 2

Postgraduate

• Data Analysis in Neuroimaging
• Programming in Neuroimaging

Publications

Selected publications

Baker, D.H., Berg, M., Hansford, K.J., Quinn, B.P.A., Segala, F.G., & Warden-English, E.L. (2024) ReproduceMe: lessons from a pilot project on computational reproducibility. Meta-Psychology. Accepted, in press. DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/k8d4u

Quinn, B.P.A., Popova, T.,  Green P.C.E., Talfourd-Cook, R. & Wiese H. (2024) The role of the eye region for neural correlates of familiar face recognition: The N250r reveals no evidence for eye-centred face representations, Visual Cognition, 22(14), 3479-3479. 

Quinn, B.P.A., & Wiese, H. (2023). The role of the eye region for familiar face recognition: Evidence from spatial low-pass filtering and contrast negation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76(2), 338-349. 

Full publications list

B.P.A Quinn: Google Scholar

External activities

Memberships

• Postgraduate Member: Experimental psychology Society
• Postgraduate Member: Vision Sciences Society