Geraint Rees
Encyclopedia
Geraint Rees FMedSci is Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and a Professor of Cognitive Neurology
and Wellcome Trust
Senior Clinical Fellow at University College London.
, Oxford
and London, he completed his PhD
degree under the supervision of Chris Frith
at University College London
's Functional Imaging Laboratory in 1999. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Christof Koch's
laboratory at the California Institute of Technology
for two years before returning to the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London
in 2001. In 2002 he became a group leader with the award of a Senior Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust
. His Senior Fellowship was renewed for a further five years in 2007. His work has been internationally recognised with the award in 2003 of the Young Investigator Medal of The Organization for Human Brain Mapping
. In 2007 he was awarded the Experimental Psychology Society
Prize and gave the Royal Society
Francis Crick Lecture
. In February 2009 he gave the Goulstonian lecture of the Royal College of Physicians
His H-index
is 40.
In 2007 he was elected Secretary and Treasurer of the Guarantors of Brain, and he is an Associate Editor of the journal Brain
. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
of London. In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
. He is a member of the Medical Research Council
Neuroscience and Mental Health Board and a member of the Medical Programme Board for England.. His Who's Who (UK)
entry lists his recreation as 'achieving a better work/life balance'
in health and disease . At present most work focuses on the neural correlate
s of particular types of conscious content, aiming to distinguish between conscious and unconscious representations in the human brain. As a considerable amount is already known about the anatomy and physiology of the visual system, much of the research in the laboratory focuses on visual awareness. However, his laboratory also studies the auditory and somatosensory systems. Most research involves functional MRI at high field, in combination with behavioral studies, transcranial magnetic stimulation
and EEG
/MEG
. Previous work by Rees has suggested that subjective awareness of objects in the visual environment is associated not just with enhanced activation in visual areas of the occipital lobe, but also areas of parietal and prefrontal cortex often associated with attention. A major focus of this work is therefore in studying interactions between visual cortex and these areas, both in the context of attention, and with respect to eye movements.
He co-edited a large reference book entitled the Neurobiology of Attention with Laurent Itti
and John Tsotsos, and is the author of numerous articles and invited reviews on the functional imaging of consciousness.
He was a member of the board of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
until stepping down in 2007, and with Patrick Wilken
organised its tenth annual meeting that was held at St. Anne's College, Oxford in June 2006.
(BMA) Medical Academic Staff Committee (MASC) since 2007, and leads on policy development concerning medical academic training. He is a member of the Medical Programme Board for England, chairs the MPB Recruitment Task and Finish Group overseeing recruitment of all trainee doctors in England. He served on the 'Walport' committee of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration developing Academic Clinical Fellow and Clinical Lecturer schemes, and leads the local ACF and CL schemes at University College London
. He was also course director for over a decade for the highly successful Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) Part 1 courses in London run by Pastest.
Cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
and Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. With an endowment of around £13.9 billion, it is the United Kingdom's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research...
Senior Clinical Fellow at University College London.
Biography
After medical training in CambridgeCambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and London, he completed his PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
degree under the supervision of Chris Frith
Chris Frith
Christopher Donald Frith is professor emeritus at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and a Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark...
at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
's Functional Imaging Laboratory in 1999. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Christof Koch's
Christof Koch
Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at California Institute of Technology, where he has been since 1986...
laboratory at the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
for two years before returning to the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
in 2001. In 2002 he became a group leader with the award of a Senior Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. With an endowment of around £13.9 billion, it is the United Kingdom's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research...
. His Senior Fellowship was renewed for a further five years in 2007. His work has been internationally recognised with the award in 2003 of the Young Investigator Medal of The Organization for Human Brain Mapping
The Organization for Human Brain Mapping
The Organization for Human Brain Mapping is an organization of scientists with the main aim of organizing an annual meeting ....
. In 2007 he was awarded the Experimental Psychology Society
Experimental Psychology Society
The Experimental Psychology Society is an academic society which facilitates research into experimental psychology and communication between experimental psychologists. It is based in the United Kingdom....
Prize and gave the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
Francis Crick Lecture
Francis Crick Lecture
The Francis Crick Lecture is a prize lecture of the Royal Society established in 2003 with an endowment from Sydney Brenner, the late Francis Crick's close friend and former colleague. It is delivered annually in biology, particularly the areas which Francis Crick worked , and also to theoretical...
. In February 2009 he gave the Goulstonian lecture of the Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...
His H-index
H-index
The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications...
is 40.
In 2007 he was elected Secretary and Treasurer of the Guarantors of Brain, and he is an Associate Editor of the journal Brain
Brain (journal)
Brain is a neurological journal published by Oxford University Press. It was edited by John Newsom-Davis from 1997 to 2004. Under his editorship it became one of the first scientific journals to go online. Since 2004 the journal is edited by Alastair Compston, Professor and Head of Department of...
. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...
of London. In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
Academy of Medical Sciences
The Academy of Medical Sciences is the United Kingdom's national academy of medical sciences. It was established in 1998 on the recommendation of a group that was chaired by Michael Atiyah. Its president is John Irving Bell....
. He is a member of the Medical Research Council
Medical Research Council (UK)
The Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded agency responsible for co-ordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is one of seven Research Councils in the UK and is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
Neuroscience and Mental Health Board and a member of the Medical Programme Board for England.. His Who's Who (UK)
Who's Who (UK)
Who's Who is an annual British publication of biographies which vary in length of about 30,000 living notable Britons.-History:...
entry lists his recreation as 'achieving a better work/life balance'
Research
His work focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying human consciousnessConsciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
in health and disease . At present most work focuses on the neural correlate
Neural correlate
A neural correlate of a content of experience is any bodily component, such as an electro-neuro-biological state or the state assumed by some biophysical subsystem of the brain, whose presence necessarily and regularly correlates with such a specific content of experience.When the full ontological...
s of particular types of conscious content, aiming to distinguish between conscious and unconscious representations in the human brain. As a considerable amount is already known about the anatomy and physiology of the visual system, much of the research in the laboratory focuses on visual awareness. However, his laboratory also studies the auditory and somatosensory systems. Most research involves functional MRI at high field, in combination with behavioral studies, transcranial magnetic stimulation
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive method to cause depolarization or hyperpolarization in the neurons of the brain...
and EEG
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
/MEG
Magnetoencephalography
Magnetoencephalography is a technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using arrays of SQUIDs...
. Previous work by Rees has suggested that subjective awareness of objects in the visual environment is associated not just with enhanced activation in visual areas of the occipital lobe, but also areas of parietal and prefrontal cortex often associated with attention. A major focus of this work is therefore in studying interactions between visual cortex and these areas, both in the context of attention, and with respect to eye movements.
He co-edited a large reference book entitled the Neurobiology of Attention with Laurent Itti
Laurent Itti
thumb|right|Laurent IttiLaurent Itti is a computational neuroscientist. He received his MS in "Image Processing" from the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Paris in 1994, and a PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from Caltech in 2000...
and John Tsotsos, and is the author of numerous articles and invited reviews on the functional imaging of consciousness.
He was a member of the board of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness is a professional membership organization that aims to encourage research on consciousness in cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy, and other relevant disciplines in the sciences and humanities, directed toward understanding the...
until stepping down in 2007, and with Patrick Wilken
Patrick Wilken
Patrick Wilken is an editor at Cell Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Melbourne in 2001 under the supervision of Jason Mattingley and William Webster, where he developed models of visual short-term memory...
organised its tenth annual meeting that was held at St. Anne's College, Oxford in June 2006.
Teaching and training
Rees has been the elected Deputy Chair of the British Medical AssociationBritish Medical Association
The British Medical Association is the professional association and registered trade union for doctors in the United Kingdom. The association does not regulate or certify doctors, a responsibility which lies with the General Medical Council. The association’s headquarters are located in BMA House,...
(BMA) Medical Academic Staff Committee (MASC) since 2007, and leads on policy development concerning medical academic training. He is a member of the Medical Programme Board for England, chairs the MPB Recruitment Task and Finish Group overseeing recruitment of all trainee doctors in England. He served on the 'Walport' committee of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration developing Academic Clinical Fellow and Clinical Lecturer schemes, and leads the local ACF and CL schemes at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
. He was also course director for over a decade for the highly successful Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) Part 1 courses in London run by Pastest.