Professor Lawrence Parsons BA, PhD

Retired

Email: L.Parsons@sheffield.ac.uk

Qualifications

BA (Irvine, California), PhD (San Diego, California), Postdoctoral Fellow (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Research Interests

My research is primarily concerned with the functional brain organisation in humans.

Brain function during performance
Specific areas my colleagues and I work on include studying the brain basis of piano performance, singing, harmonizing, conducting, and improvising music, and as well as dancing. Likewise, we have compared music to language in comparable performances, including the neural basis of pitch perception.

Cognitive function in reasoning
We are studying the cognitive and neural basis of deductive and probabilistic reasoning, in some cases in order to clarify the relation of such systems to those for language, mathematics, etc. We are investigating the cognitive illusions of estimation.

Analysis of activity patterns
We are exploring analyses of activity patterns measured in functional magnetic resonance for the internal structure of natural conceptual categories, and for object and predicate pairs composing propositions. We have been studying possible non-motor function(s) of the cerebellum.

Other research projects in our recent past include:

• Proposing and evaluating neuroimaging and neuroscience methods.
• Studying how differently oriented objects are recognized when humans rely on visual, cutaneous, or tactile information.
• Investigating how humans understand and reason about space, geometry, and object motion.
• Work on the neurophysiology of motor-sensory control in mental simulation and physical action.
• Investigating the cognitive and neural organization of the representation of the internal structure and surfaces of one’s body.

Our research employs fMRI and PET neuroimaging, neurology, and psychological studies.

Grants

Prior to 2001, I was a co-principal investigator on grants from the National Institute of Health on functions of the cerebellum and on a multi-centre program project (International Consortium for Brain Mapping), as well as separate grants on music and brain studies from the ChevronTexaco Foundation and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Legally prohibited from holding grants during my term as program director at the National Science Foundation (USA) during 2001-2003, my colleagues and I are now preparing grants for studies of the function of the cerebellum, for studies of music and language, and for studies of reasoning.

Activities and Distinctions

• 2006-2007: Foreign Senior Scientist, Institute for Cognitive Science, CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Lyon, France.
• 2004 Professor in Residence, Centre for Learning and Music, University of Texas Austin.
• 2001-2003, Founding Director, Cognitive Neuroscience Program, National Science Foundation (USA); Co-Founding Director, Joint National Science Foundation-National Institute of Health Computational Neuroscience Program.
• 2002, Director's Award for Collaborative Integration, Biology and Information Technology Programs, National Science Foundation (USA)
• Editorial Board of Social Cognitive Neuroscience, served on the Board of Human Brain Mapping from until 2000-2004.
• Trustee, International Foundation for Musical Research, 2003-present.
• Faculty, Brain Basis of Emotion, Vivian Smith Advanced Studies Institute of the International Neuropsychology Society, Xylocastro, Greece, June 2007.
• Music and Brain Research: Implications for Development and Education, Keynote Address, Beijing International Forum on Music Education 2006: A dialogue on research and policy development, May, 2006, Chinese International Exhibition Centre, Beijing.
• Lecturer, Gruter Institute Squaw Valley Conferences on Law, Behavior, and Brain, Nevada, May 2003-2006.
• Music and Consciousness: The View from Neuroscience. Keynote Address, Music and Consciousness Conference. University of Sheffield, July 2006.
• Examiner/Advisor on PhD of Barbara Tomasino (Institute for Advanced Study, Trieste, Italy), Awarded Best Ph.D. Thesis, Italian Association of Psychologists, 2004.
• Panelist, Reith Lecture, London, 2006.
• Panelist, Member of Scientific Committee, Language and Music as Cognitive Systems Conference, Cambridge University, May 2007.
• Chief Scientific Advisor, The Music Instinct, a three-hour international documentary in production for international public television distribution, Elena Mannes, Director, funded at 4 Million USD by National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation, ARTE, WNET, NHK Japan, amongst others.
• Media, 2005-2006: TV Asahi Brain Science Documentary (Tokyo, Japan), March 2005.
• City of Leuven, Belgium, Celebration of Physics (Einstein anniversary), (Images of PET findings exhibited), March 2005; Financial Times (May 2005); BBC Radio 4,(the Material World; PM Magazine; Pick of the Week (October 2005); Times of London (November 2005); Topic Magazine (May 2006); Ballettanz Magazine (Spring, 2006); Quest Magazine (Spring 2006); BBC-4 TV documentary “A passion for piano” hosted by Alexander Waugh (September 2006); Featured in Wild Music, Science Museum Exhibit Travelling throughout the USA, Spring 2007.

Organiser of Symposia:

• Mapping the Senses Merging. 6th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, San Antonio, June, 2000;
• Mapping music in the brain, A Satellite Symposium at 6th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, San Antonio, June, 2000;
• The Musical Brain, Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, July, 2002;
• White Matter in the Cognitive Neurosciences: Advances in Diffusion Tensor Imaging and its Applications. New York Academy of Sciences, August 2004 (Co-Organizers: John Ulmer, John Gabrieli, Michael Moseley).

Key Publications

BOWER, JM., and PARSONS, LM. 2003
Rethinking the lesser brain.
Scientific American 289, 50-57. (Also published in Portuguese and German translations)

PARSONS LM., DENTON D., EGAN G., MCKINLEY, M., SHADE RM., LANCASTER J. and FOX PT. 2000
Neuroimaging evidence implicating cerebellum in support of sensory/cognitive processes associated with thirst. Proceedings of National Academy of Science USA 97: 2332-2336.

PARSONS LM., GABRIELI JDE., PHELPS EA. and GAZZANIGA MS. 1998
Cerebrally-lateralized mental representations of hand shape and movement.
Journal of Neuroscience 18, 6539-6548.

PARSONS LM., SERGENT J., HODGES DA. and FOX PT. 2005
Brain basis of piano performance.
Neuropsychologia 43, 199-215.

BROWN S., MARTINEZ MJ. and PARSONS LM. 2006
The neural basis of human dance.
Cerebral Cortex 16, 1157-1167,.

BROWN S., MARTINEZ MJ. and PARSONS LM. 2006
Music and language side by side in the brain: A PET study of generating melodies and sentences.
European Journal of Neuroscience 23, 2791-2803. Images from study were Issue Cover Illustration.

MONTI, MM., OSHERSON, D., MARTINEZ, MM. and PARSONS, LM. Functional neuroanatomy of deductive inference.
Under review.

View a full list of Lawrence Parsons' publications.

Postgraduate Students

• Yael Benn - PhD Student
• Nyssa Craig - MSc Student