Professor Kim Shapiro

School of Psychology
Professor and Chair of Cognitive Neuroscience

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 4930
Email: k.l.shapiro@bham.ac.uk

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

Professor Shapiro in collaboration with other colleagues published the first paper on the ‘attentional blink’ phenomenon. His current research interests continue in attention, particularly as it interacts with short- and long- term memory. He maintains an active lab that includes postdocs, doctoral and masters students, and undergraduate research assistants. In addition to basic research, he is interested in the combined application of brain stimulation and cognitive training to older adults and stroke patients ageing normally and abnormally (e.g., dementia).

He employs a wide range of neuroscience approaches and tools in his research, including functional imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and transcranial current stimulation (TCS). Funding for his research has come from the Welcome Trust, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, HFSP, McDonnell Pew Foundation, and the Guangzhou (China) First People’s hospital.

Qualifications

BSc, MSc, PhD

Teaching

Animal learning, attention and memory

Postgraduate supervision

Kim Shapiro, in collaboration with colleagues, published the first paper on the ‘attentional blink’ phenomenon, which has attracted great interest on the part of many scientists. The original publication has been cited over 1000 times and approximately 500 reports on the same topic have followed from it. He employs a wide range of neuroscience approaches and tools in his research, including functional imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs), and magnetoencephalography (MEG).

Professor Shapiro has received recent funding for his research from the BBSRC, the ESRC, the Human Frontiers of Science Programme, and the Wellcome Trust.

Professor Shapiro supervises postgraduate research in all his areas of interest. Those wishing to apply to work in his lab are encouraged to contact him directly by email.

Other activities

Professor Shapiro joined the University of Birmingham in 2012 from Bangor University where he held the Chair of Cognitive Neuroscience. During his first six years at UoB he was the Head of the School of Psychology and active in helping to establish the Centre for Human Brain Health and the Institute for Mental Health.

He is a member of the Society for Neurosciences, the Psychonomics Society, and the Vision Sciences Society.

He reviews for a number of journals and has served as a member of the grant panel (A) for the Biological and Biosciences Research Council (BBSRC) and is currently on the grant panel for the Royal Society’s Newton Fellowship committee.

He served as Associate Editor for Perception and Psychophysics, as an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Cognition, and as a member of the Consulting Board for the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

In addition to his research interests in attention and memory, he is currently developing a means of enhancing working memory in older adults and patients with stroke using transcranial stimulation in combination with cognitive training.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Lindh, D, Sligte, I, Assecondi, S, Shapiro, K & Charest, I 2019, 'Conscious perception of natural images is constrained by category-related visual features', Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, 4106. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12135-3

Hanslmayr, S, Shapiro, K & Clouter, A 2018, 'Single-trial Phase Entrainment of Theta Oscillations in Sensory Regions Predicts Human Associative Memory Performance', The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 28, pp. 6299-6309. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0349-18.2018

Mazaheri, A, Segaert, K, Olichney, J, Yang, J-C, Niu, Y-Q, Shapiro, K & Bowman, H 2018, 'EEG oscillations during word processing predict MCI conversion to Alzheimer's disease', NeuroImage: Clinical, vol. 17, pp. 188-197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2017.10.009

Shapiro, K, Hanslmayr, S, Enns, J & Lleras, A 2017, 'Alpha, Beta: The Rhythm of the Attentional Blink', Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1862–1869. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1257-0

Clouter, A, Shapiro, K & Hanslmayr, S 2017, 'Theta phase synchronization is the glue that binds human associative memory', Current Biology, vol. 27, no. 20, pp. 3143-3148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.001

Ahmad, J, Swan, G, Bowman, H, Wyble, B, Nobre, A, Shapiro, K & McNab, F 2017, 'Competitive interactions affect working memory performance for both simultaneous and sequential stimulus presentation', Scientific Reports, vol. 7, 4785. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-05011-x

Eddy, C, Shapiro, K, Clouter, A, Hansen, P & Rickards, H 2017, 'Transcranial direct current stimulation can enhance working memory in Huntington's disease', Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, vol. 77, pp. 75-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2017.04.002

Kerlin, J & Shapiro, K 2015, 'Multisensory integration: how sound alters sight', Current Biology, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. R76-R77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.12.016

Miller, CE, Shapiro, KL & Luck, SJ 2015, 'Electrophysiological measurement of the effect of inter-stimulus competition on early cortical stages of human vision', NeuroImage, vol. 105, pp. 229-237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.10.033

Ihssen, N, Linden, DEJ, Miller, CE & Shapiro, K 2015, 'Neural Mechanisms Underlying Visual Short-Term Memory Gain for Temporally Distinct Objects', Cerebral Cortex, vol. 25, pp. 2149-2159.

Pinto, Y, Sligte, IG, Shapiro, KL & Lamme, VAF 2013, 'Fragile visual short-term memory is an object-based and location-specific store', Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 732-9. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0393-4

Zauner, A, Fellinger, R, Gross, J, Hanslmayr, S, Shapiro, K, Gruber, W, Müller, S & Klimesch, W 2012, 'Alpha entrainment is responsible for the attentional blink phenomenon', NeuroImage, vol. 63, no. 2, pp. 674-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.075

Johnston, SJ, Linden, DEJ & Shapiro, KL 2012, 'Functional imaging reveals working memory and attention interact to produce the attentional blink', Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 28-38. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00054

Conference contribution

Chiou, E, Bieksaite, G, Stolkin, R, Hawes, N, Shapiro, K & Harrison, TS 2016, Experimental analysis of a variable autonomy framework for controlling a remotely operating mobile robot. in Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016), Daejeon, Korea, Republic of, 9/10/16. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2016.7759527

Chiou, M, Hawes, N, Stolkin, R, Shapiro, KL, Kerlin, JR & Clouter, A 2015, Towards the principled study of variable autonomy in mobile robots. in IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC2015). pp. 1053 - 1059, IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics SMC 2015, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 9/10/15. https://doi.org/10.1109/SMC.2015.190

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