home page for Kielan Yarrow

Dr Kielan Yarrow

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Kielan

I work as a lecturer at the Department of Psychology, City University.

My office is in the social sciences building room D510. You can contact me by phone on 020 70408530 (internal x 8530) or (preferably) email kielan.yarrow.1@city.ac.uk


  1. Teaching & supervision
  2. Research interests
  3. Research methods
  4. Recent publications
    5.

Undergraduate teaching (2009/10):

My office hours are currently Tuesdays 2-3, Wednesdays 2-3 and Thursdays 11-12. This year I will be on sabbatical in the second and third terms. In the first term I will be supervising third-year projects (slots as scheduled on the new timetable by arrangement, although I am flexible about days/times) but teaching only one of my usual second-year and third-year courses:

Postgraduate supervision:

I currently supervise two PhD students, Stergios Makris and Aviad Hadar. Stergios is looking at the Gibsonian notion of "affordances" (the automatic activation of motor plans during object perception), while Aviad is interested in both motor and memory responses to emotional stimuli.

I welcome informal enquiries from potential PhD students. The psychology department may be funding one or two PhD places to start in September 2010, in addition to City's central studentship competition.

Research interests:


multisensory time

Consider an exploding truck (well, why not?) Different sensory features (e.g. the truck’s colour, the motion of its various bits, and the sound of the explosion) are analysed in separate areas of the brain, which become activated at slightly different times. This seems at odds with our experience of a unitary sequence of events in time. To support temporal perception, the brain must compute both how long the truck was stalled (an interval) and when it exploded (an instant). Instants and intervals form a seamless and coherent perception of ongoing time, but the neural and computational basis of these perceptual experiences is not yet clear. I have studied how information from different modalities is combined when we decide about the timing of events (like exactly when the the truck exploded) and have current projects investigating various aspects of our multisensory temporal experience.

.....
stopped clock

The chronostasis illusion was the major focus of my PhD and post-doctoral research. The term chronostasis describes an overestimation of the duration of a stimulus perceived following a movement. For example, in saccadic chronostasis, an object fixated following a saccade (a very rapid eye movement) is typically judged to have been seen for longer than is actually the case. This effect is most commonly experienced as the stopped clock illusion (the momentary impression that a clock has stopped when we first glance at it). The illusion is an interesting example of the way in which the brain constructs a coherent conscious visual experience when the temporal sequencing of events is made ambiguous by movement. Much of this work has been completed in collaboration with John Rothwell (ION, UCL) and Patrick Haggard (ICN, UCL).

.....
the basal ganglia

The basal ganglia are a group of subcortical nuclei that are involved in the generation of movements. Parkinson's disease is thought to result from a dysfunction of the basal ganglia. When Parkinsonian patients undergo surgery for the relief of their symptoms via deep brain stimulation, a window of opportunity exists to record from the targeted subcortical structures. I have collaborated with both Peter Brown at the Institute of Neurology and Andrea Kühn at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, helping to design and programme tasks used with these patients to investigate the functions of the basal ganglia.

.....
a force platform

My earliest research projects investigated the human movement and balance systems. In one study I investigated a rare neurological condition called primary orthostatic tremor. Patients with this condition are unable to stand still for more than a few moments before beginning to shake with a distinctive high frequency tremor. We used a force platform to offer a new way to diagnose sufferers. This work was carried out with Adolfo Bronstein, now at Imperial College.

.....
The mind

I also have broader interests in a number of areas of cognitive science. For example, I have been involved with projects looking at whether tactile events can yield auditory experiences, how the coordination of the fingers during complex tasks is made tractable, and what role the pre-frontal and parietal cortices play in generating shifts of visual attention and preparing motor acts.


Research methods:


Cognitive Neuroscience

I have conducted studies with both healthy participants and neurological patients, and been an author on publications using a variety of neuroscientific methods, including behavioural and psychophysical techniques, occulography, electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), intracranial recordings of local field potentials (LFPs), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). At City, I am a member of the cognitive neuroscience research unit, and am responsible for the TMS lab.


My current H-Index is 10, with a mean average of 16 citations per paper. My publications and papers in press are shown below:-

  • Yarrow, K. Temporal dilation: The chronostasis illusion and spatial attention.. In A. C. Nobre and J Coull (Eds.) Attention and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press (In press).
  • Yarrow, K. Continuity of subjective temporal experience across eye movements: Temporal antedating following small, large and sequential saccades. In N. Srinivasan, B. R. Kar and J. Pandey (Eds.) Advances in Cognitive Science: Volume 2. New Delhi: Sage (In press).
  • Yarrow, K., Haggard, P. & Rothwell, J.C. Saccadic chronostasis and the continuity of subjective temporal experience across eye movements. In R. Nijhawan & B. Khurana (Eds.) Space and time in Perception and action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (In press).
  • Ley, I., Haggard, P. & Yarrow, K. Optimal integration of auditory and vibrotactile information for judgments of temporal order. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35, 1005-1019 (2009).
  • Yarrow, K., Brown, P. & Krakauer, J.W. Inside the brain of an elite athlete: the neural processes that support high achievement in sports Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 585-596 (2009).
    • This review has been featured as part of a nature podcast (MP3 format; from July 2009, with my bit starting at 06:41).
  • Sauleau, P., Eusebio, A., Thevathasan, W., Yarrow, K., Pogosyan, A., Zrinzo, L., Ashkan, K., Aziz, T., Vandenberghe, W., Nuttin, B., & Brown, P. Involvement of the Subthalamic Nucleus in engagement with behaviourally relevant stimuli. European Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 931-42 (2009).
  • Yarrow, K., Haggard, P. & Rothwell, J.C. Vibrotactile-auditory interactions are post-perceptual. Perception, 37, 1114-1130 (2008).
  • Brücke, C., Kempf, F., Kupsch, A., Schneider. G., Krauss, J.K., Aziz, T., Yarrow, K., Pogosyan, A., Brown, P., & Kühn, A.A. Movement-related synchronisation of gamma activity is lateralized in patients with dystonia. European Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 2322-9 (2008).
  • Brücke, C., Kupsch, A., Schneider, G.H., Hariz, M.I., Nuttin, B., Kopp, U., Kempf, F., Trottenberg, T., Doyle, L., Chen, C.C., Yarrow, K., Brown, P., & Kühn, A.A. The subthalamic region is activated during valence-related emotional processing in patients with Parkinson's disease. European Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 767-74 (2007).
  • Androulidakis, A.G., Doyle, L.M., Yarrow, K., Litvak, V., Gilbertson, TP, & Brown P. Anticipatory changes in beta synchrony in the human corticospinal system and associated improvements in task performance. European Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 3758-65 (2007).
  • Rounis, E., Yarrow, K. & Rothwell, J.C. Effects of rTMS conditioning over the fronto-parietal network on motor versus visual attention. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 513-524 (2007).
  • Brown, P., Chen, C.C., Wang, S., Kühn, A.,Doyle, L., Yarrow, K., Nuttin, B., Stein, J. & Aziz, T. Involvement of Human Basal Ganglia in Off-Line Feed-Back Control of Voluntary Movement. Current Biology, 16, 2129-34 (2006).
  • Yarrow, K., Whiteley, L., Haggard, P. & Rothwell, J.C. Biases in the perceived timing of perisaccadic visual and motor events. Perception and Psychophysics, 68, 1217-26 (2006).
  • Kühn, A.A., Doyle, L., Pogosyan, A., Yarrow, K., Kupsch, A., Schneider, G., Hariz, M.I., Trottenberg, T. & Brown, P. Modulation of beta oscillations in the subthalamic area during motor imagery in Parkinson's disease. Brain, 129, 695-706 (2006).
  • Yarrow, K., Whiteley, L., Rothwell, J.C. & Haggard, P. Spatial consequences of bridging the saccadic gap. Vision Research, 46, 545-555 (2006).
  • Kühn, A.A., Hariz, M., Silberstein, P., Tisch, S., Kupsch, A., Schneider, G., Limousin-Dowsey, P., Yarrow, K. & Brown, P. Activation of the subthalamic region during emotional processing in Parkinson’s disease. Neurology, 65, 707-713 (2005).
  • Doyle, L.M.F., Yarrow, K. & Brown, P. Lateralization of event-related beta desynchronization in the EEG during pre-cued reaction time tasks. Clinical Neurophysiology, 116, 1879-1888 (2005).
  • Yarrow, K., Johnson, H., Haggard, P. & Rothwell, J.C. Consistent chronostasis effects across saccade categories imply a subcortical efferent trigger. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 839-847 (2004).
  • Yarrow, K., Haggard, P. & Rothwell, J. C. E. Action, arousal, and subjective time. Consciousness and Cognition, 13, 373-390 (2004).
  • Kühn, A.A., Williams, D., Kupsch, A., Dowsey-Limousin, P., Hariz, M., Schneider, G.H., Yarrow, K., & Brown, P. Event related beta desynchronization in human subthalamic nucleus correlates with motor performance. Brain, 127, 735-746 (2004).
  • Williams, D., Kühn, A., Kupsch, A., Tijssen, M., van Bruggen, G., Speelman, H., Hotton, G., Yarrow, K., & Brown, P. Behavioural cues are associated with modulations of synchronous oscillations in the human subthalamic nucleus. Brain, 126, 1975-1985 (2003).
  • Yarrow, K. & Rothwell, J.C. Manual chronostasis: Tactile perception precedes physical contact. Current Biology, 13, 1134-1139 (2003).
  • Latash, M.L., Yarrow, K. & Rothwell, J.C. Changes in finger coordination and responses to single pulse TMS of motor cortex during practice of a multifinger force production task. Experimental Brain Research, 151, 60-71 (2003).
  • Yarrow, K., Haggard, P., Heal, R., Brown, P. & Rothwell, J.C. Illusory perceptions of space and time preserve cross-saccadic perceptual continuity. Nature, 414, 302-305 (2001).
    • This paper received some press interest, for example this interview (MP3 format) on the Canadian science radio show Quirks and Quarks (from 17th November 2001).
  • Yarrow, K., Brown, P., Gresty, M.A. & Bronstein, A.M. Force platform recordings in the diagnosis of primary orthostatic tremor. Gait & Posture, 13, 27-34 (2001).
    • An erratum relating to the published version of this article appeared subsequently in Gait & Posture, 14, 279 (2001).
  • Guerraz, M., Shaollo-Hoffmann, J., Yarrow, K., Thilo, K.V., Bronstein, A.M. & Gresty, M.A. Visual control of postural orientation and equilibrium in congenital nystagmus. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 41, 3798-3804 (2000).
  • Jauregui-Renaud, K., Yarrow, K., Oliver, T., Gresty, M.A. & Bronstein, A.M. Effects of caloric stimulation on respiratory frequency and heart rate and blood pressure variability. Brain Research Bulletin, 53, 17-23 (2000).
NB to view files you may require Acrobat Reader (free software). For copyright reasons, some files are provided as final submitted manuscripts rather than press formatted articles. download acrobat reader

Click here for Kielan's full academic CV.

Andrea, you can find the two new experiments here and here. The update of the picture programme is here. Also, the new version of the rotate programme is here.

Peter, you can find the latest version of the movement experiment here.

Catherine & Giacomo, you can find the time experiment here. Before it will run, you will need to get a zip file, unpack it and run the setup.exe to install some necessary files on you machine. I've had to remove the link to this due to problems with the host site's bandwidth, so contact me if you need it again.

Last updated 18/12/2009

Page created by Kielan Yarrow © 2001. Have a nice day.