معرفی
Professor Paul Downing is a leading academic in the Department of Psychology at Bangor University, specializing in social vision and cognitive neuroscience. His career includes a PhD from Princeton University (1998) and postdoctoral work at MIT before joining Bangor in 2000. He was promoted to Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2010 and has held administrative roles such as Deputy Head of College (Research) and Acting Dean for the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences.
His research focuses on how the brain processes visual information about faces, bodies, and actions to construct social understanding. Projects funded by BBSRC, Leverhulme Trust, and ESRC explore topics like sex and emotion discrimination from bodies, neural representations of social interactions, and visual attention in social contexts. He oversees Bangor's 3T MRI system and maintains a lab website with further details.
Recent publications highlight his work on cortical motor mapping, social brain responses, and visual categorical discrimination. His methodological toolkit includes fMRI, TMS, ERP, and psychophysics, emphasizing neural network analysis and cognitive theory validation. The "Social Brain" module he teaches engages students with primary research through critical analysis and presentations.
