My research career started as an undergraduate student in the 1980’s carrying out a research project on visual motion perception under the supervison of Laurence Harris (now at North York University, Toronto) and Andy Smith (Royal Holloway University). This sparked an interest in visual and behavioural neuroscience which led to a job as a perceptual psychologist at a flight simulator manufacturer in Gatwick. After 2 years in the private sector I commenced study for a PhD at Birkbeck college, University of London, researching the cognitive and neural systems involved in the control of human eye movements and visual attention supervised by Prof. Hermann Muller.
Following my doctorate I was employed as a post-doctoral research fellow on a Wellcome Trust program grant held by Christopher Kennard (now at University of Oxford) and the late Leslie Henderson at Charing Cross Hospital London, investigating the role of fronto-striatal brain circuits in oculomotor control. In 1998 I helped author a new program grant proposal to the Welcome Trust which was awarded to Prof. Kennard. I was appointed a research lecturer at Imperial College in 1998 and served as deputy director of the new research programme. In 2002 I accepted a lectureship in cognitive psychology at the University of Exeter. In May 2003 I was awarded a 3 year project grant by the Wellcome Trust to forward my research into the control and self-monitoring functions of the human frontal cerebral cortex. The project resulted in four peer reviewed publications in high ranking journals, including a major study of response inhibition and rule switching in patients with focal frontal damage published in Brain. In 2008-2009 I was awarded a Wellcome Trust sabbatical grant to pursue my research studies at the Behavioural and Clinical Neurosciences Institute, University of Cambridge.
I was appointed as Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Lincoln in September 2011 to join a growing team of researchers in the Cognition Perception and Action group. Lincoln is an exciting young university that has invested in staff and facilities for Cognitive Neuroscience research. I am looking forward to forging new collaborative links with researchers within the School, University and other Universities.
I am passionate about teaching Biological Psychology / Cognitive Neuroscience to undergraduate psychology students, particularly those with no previous scientific background. I have also been pleased to have taught Philosophy of Science and Cognitive Neuroscience methods to undergraduate and post-graduate students.
In Lincoln I am taking a leading role in preparing the School of Psychology for the upcoming Research Excellence Framework.
My primary research interests are the organisation and functions of the frontal cerebral cortex of the brain and the control of human eye movements. As well as fMRI scanning studies my research essentially involves working with neurological patients such as people who have suffered stroke or who have Parkinson‘s. My research has been funded by Wellcome Trust, ESRC and ESRC/MRC awards.
Most recently I have developed an interest in social neuroscience and "neuro-economics": How are social and economic decision making processes carried out in the brain?
PhD Students/External collaborators
Post-graduate research students (in order of graduation):
Charlotte Golding. Eye movements during Task Switching. Wellcome Prize Student, Imperial College Medical School. PhD Awarded 2003.
Sarah Bate. Eye movements and Emotion Processing in Prosopagnosia; Awarded 2009; Now lecturer at University of Bournemouth
Sarah Carr. fMRI studies of somatosensory cortical mapping in chronic regional pain syndrome. PhD awarded 2009. Post-doc on detecting neurodegenerative disorders with MRI, University of Ohio, USA.
Kate Janse Van Rensburg. fMRI and eye tracking studies of the effect of exercise on smoking cravings. PhD Awarded 2009. Now a Post-doc’ in Florida USA.
Nicola Gregory. The effect of socio-biological cues on saccadic eye movement programming . PhD Awarded 2011. Currently at University of Portsmouth UK.
Dr Ian Frampton (DClinSci). Part-time PhD student carrying out fMRI studies of insula dysfunction in eating disorders (Currently based in Oslo).
Jenna Oliphant. Dclin Sci project student. Facial emotion processing in childhood brain injury
External Collaborators
Ben Parris My former post-doc now a senior lecturer at Bournemouth University
Neal Hinvest Former Post-doctoral Research Fellow researching “Neuroeconomics and neuromarketing”. Now Lecturer at University of Bath.
Francesco Guala. University of Milan. Neuroimaging and neuropharcological studies of social cooperative behaviour.
Paul Anand. Open University. fMRI studies of decision making in health resource allocation rationing.
Huddy VC, Hodgson TL, Ron MA, Barnes TRE, Joyce EM (2011) Abnormal negative feedback processing in first episode schizophrenia: evidence from an oculomotor rule switching task. Psychological Medicine 41(9) p. 1805-1814.
Guala F and Hodgson T (2010) The philosopher and the scanner (or: how can neuroscience contribute to social philosophy). Journal of Economic Methodology, 17(2), p 147-158.
Bate S, Haslam C, Hodgson TL, Jansari A, Gregory N, Kay J (2010) Positive and negative emotion enhances the processing of famous faces in a semantic judgment task. Neuropsychology. 24(1): 84-9.
Bate S, Haslam C Jansari A, Hodgson TL (2009) Covert face recognition relies on affective valence in congenital prosopagnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26(4): 391-411.
Van Rensburg, KJ; Taylor, A; Hodgson, T (2009) The effects of acute exercise on attentional bias towards smoking-related stimuli during temporary abstinence from smoking. Addiction 104(11): 1910-1917.
Van Rensburg KJ, Taylor A, Hodgson TL, Benattayallah A (2009) Acute exercise modulates cigarette cravings and brain activation in response to smoking-related images: an fMRI study. Psychopharmacology 203(3): 589-98.
Hodgson TL, Parris BA, Gregory NJ, Jarvis TC (2009) The oculomotor Stroop task: evidence for automatic programming of saccades by linguistic cues. Vision Research 49(5): 569-574.
Bate S, Haslam, C, Hodgson TL (2009) Angry Faces Are Special Too: Evidence From the Visual Scanpath. Neuropsychology. 23(5): 658-667.
Milton, F, Wills, AJ, Hodgson TL (2009) The neural basis of overall similarity and single-dimension sorting. Neuroimage 46(1): 319-326.
Parris, BA, Kuhn, G, Mizon, GA, Benattayallah, A, Hodgson, TL (2009) Imaging the impossible: An fMRI study of impossible causal relationships in magic tricks. Neuroimage 45(3): 1033-1039.
Bate S, Haslam C, Tree JJ, Hodgson TL (2008) Evidence of an eye movement-based memory effect in congenital prosopagnosia. Cortex 44: 806-819.
Mitchell, DC; Shen, XJ; Green, MJ, Hodgson TL (2008) Accounting for regressive eye-movements in models of sentence processing: A reappraisal of the Selective Reanalysis hypothesis. Journal Of Memory And Language 59(3): 266-293.
Mannan, SK, Hodgson TL, Husain M, Kennard C (2008) Eye movements in visual search indicate impaired saliency processing in Parkinson's disease. Progress Brain Research 171: 559-62.
Rosenthal CR Hodgson TL Husain M, Nachev P, Kennard C (2008) Supplementary eye field contributions to the execution of saccades to remembered target locations. Progress in Brain Research 171: 419-23.
Hodgson TL, Chamberlain M, Parris BA, James M, Gutowski NJ, Husain M, and Kennard C. (2007) The role of the ventrolateral frontal cortex in inhibitory oculomotor control. Brain, 130: 1525-1537.
Huddy VC, Hodgson TL, Harrison I, Kapasi M, Stanley H, Thomas M, Barnes TR & Joyce EM. (2007) Gaze strategies in planning during first episode psychosis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116 (3): 589-598.
Parris BA, Thai NJ, Benattayallah A, Summers IR and Hodgson TL. (2007) The role of the lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate in stimulus-response association reversals. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 19(1):13-24.
Parton A, Nachev P, Hodgson TL, Mort D, Thomas D, Ordidge R, Morgan P, Jackson S, Rees G & Husain M. (2007) The role of the human supplementary eye field in the control of saccadic eye movements. Neuropsychologia 45 (5), p 997-1008.
Wills AJ, Lavric A, Croft GS & Hodgson TL (2007) Predictive learning, prediction errors and attention: Evidence from event-related potentials and eye-tracking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19 (5): 843-854.
Golding CVP, Danchaivijitr C, Hodgson TL, Tabrizi SJ & Kennard C (2006)
Identification of an oculomotor biomarker of preclinical Huntington disease.
Neurology, 67 (3): 485-487.
2008-2009: “Control and monitoring functions of the human rostral prefrontal cortex” (sole applicant), £9700 over 6 months, Wellcome Trust Sabbatical Award.
2007-2009: “The Neuroscience of Social Conventions and Norms” (with Francesco Guala, Department of Philosophy), £98,000 over 18 months, ESRC.
2006-2010: “Neural correlates of economic processing” £117,000 over 3 years, Great Western Research initiative fellowship.
2006-2008: “The representation of emotional and personal significance in person-specific knowledge” (with Cath Haslam & Janice Kay), £79,838 over 1 year, ESRC.
2006-2008: “Modelling eye movements made in the course of reading syntactically ambiguous sentences” (with Don Mitchell) £76,533 over 1 year, ESRC
2004-2008: “Cortical Changes and Musculoskeletal Pain” (with Ian Summers, School of Physics & Huw Williams) £62,720 over 3 years, Devon Arthritis and Allied Research Trust (DAART).
2003-2007: “Self-control and monitoring functions of human frontal cortex”
(sole applicant)
£197,000 over 3 years, Wellcome Trust Project grant.