Professor Andrew Bagshaw BSc, MSc, PhD

School of Psychology
Professor of Imaging Neuroscience

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 3683
Email: a.p.bagshaw@bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Psychology
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Bagshaw's main focus is on understanding how the human brain is impacted by sleep and epilepsy, with a particular emphasis on the role of the thalamus. He is also interested in understanding how ongoing brain activity influences brain and behavioural responses. This work requires new tools to be developed and applied, particularly for the acquisition and analysis of simultaneously recorded electroencephalography (EEG) and functional MRI (fMRI) data, and for linking functional data with brain structure. Current work in the Multimodal Integration Group (MIG) is investigating the role of the thalamus and particularly the thalamic reticular nucleus in sleep and attention, and the role sleep plays in neurodevelopmental and neurological conditions.

Qualifications

BSc, MSc, PhD

Biography

Andy Bagshaw is a physicist by training, having completed a PhD in Nuclear Physics at the University of Manchester in 1998. He went on to undertake postdoctoral positions at City University London, University College London (UCL), and the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI). It was at UCL and subsequently the MNI that he first worked on the development of brain imaging techniques, with a specific focus on epilepsy. He has worked at the University of Birmingham since 2005, where he is Professor of Imaging Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Centre for Human Brain Health.

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Bagshaw currently supervises or co-supervises 5 PhD students. Prospective students are always welcome to get in touch (a.p.bagshaw@bham.ac.uk).

Research

Professor Bagshaw is interested in developing the combination of EEG and fMRI to provide more precise spatial and temporal localisation of brain activity. Measuring both the electrical and haemodynamic responses to a task or neural event offers the possibility of new insights into the basic mechanisms of brain function, and greater understanding of disorders of function, such as epilepsy and sleep disorders. The Multimodal Integration Group (MIG) are using EEG-fMRI to study response covariability in single trials with robust sensory paradigms, developing methods to improve data quality based on independent component analysis and methods to integrate the data based on information theory, as well as using these techniques to study questions in cognitive neuroscience, sleep and epilepsy. They are also examining the link between the information provided by structural and functional imaging and that from neuropsychological testing in order to understand more about the effect of epilepsy on normal brain functions.

www.birmingham.ac.uk/chbh

Other activities

Professor Bagshaw sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee of Epilepsy Research UK (https://epilepsyresearch.org.uk/). He is also Chair of the Midlands Medical Imaging Network (http://birmingham.ac.uk/mmin), and co-Chair of the Birmingham Epilepsy Research Network.