Prof. Tony J. Prescott

Dept Psychology, Univ of Sheffield, UK

Unpublished articles

• Cortical sensorimotor signal flow
• Carl Petersen

Curator and author

• Vibrissal behavior and function
• (2011) Tony J. Prescott, Ben Mitchinson, Robyn Anne Grant

• Encyclopedia of touch
• (2012) Tony J. Prescott

• Action selection
• (2008) Tony J. Prescott

Articles sponsored or reviewed

• Observed touch
• (2009) Jamie Ward

• Phantom touch
• (2009) Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, David Brang

• Central touch disorders
• (2011) Haike van Stralen, Chris Dijkerman

• Visually-impaired touch
• (2012) Morton Heller, Soledad Ballesteros

• Development of touch
• (2009) Yannick Bleyenheuft, Jean Louis Thonnard

• Texture from touch
• (2009) Sliman Bensmaia

• Thermal touch
• (2009) Lynette Jones

• Haptic exploration
• (2009) Roberta Klatzky, Catherine L. Reed

• S1 long-term plasticity
• (2012) Daniel Shulz, Valerie Ego-Stengel

• Balance of excitation and inhibition
• (2009) Michael Okun, Ilan Lampl

• S1 laminar specialization
• (2010) Ehud Ahissar, Jochen Staiger

• Vibrissal afferents from trigeminus to cortices
• (2009) Martin Deschenes, Nadia Urbain

• Vibrissal midbrain loops
• (2011) Manuel Castro-Alamancos, Asaf Keller

• Whisking pattern generation
• (2009) Phil Zeigler, Asaf Keller

• Cockroach antennae
• (2009) Jiro Okada

• Tactile hair in Manatees
• (2009) Roger Reep, Diana K. Sarko

• Vibrissal touch in the Etruscan shrew
• (2009) Claudia Roth-Alpermann, Michael Brecht

• Vibrissal texture decoding
• (2009) Ehsan Arabzadeh, Moritz von Heimendahl, Mathew Diamond

• Vibrissal location coding
• (2011) Ehud Ahissar, Per M Knutsen

Recognized contributor

• Mechanoreceptors and stochastic resonance
• (2008) Lon A. Wilkens, Frank Moss

• Vibrissal thalamic modes
• (2010) Manuel Castro-Alamancos

Current Appointments

• Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK.
• Director of the Sheffield Centre for Robotics
• Co-Director of the University of Sheffield's Adaptive Behaviour Research Group
• Director of the Active Touch Laboratory at Sheffield (ATL@S)
• Visiting Fellow at Bristol Robotics Laboratory

Education

• MA Psychology (honours), University of Edinburgh, 1984.
• MSc Applied Artificial Intelligence, University of Aberdeen, 1989.
• PhD, University of Sheffield, 1994.

Homepage

Research Interests
My research is concerned with understanding brain function using methods in the computational, neural, and behavioural sciences. An important focus is on comparing the control problems faced by animals and robots: (i) using insights from robotics and artificial intelligence to understand the control architecture of the brain (e.g. 10), (ii) using evidence from brain evolution to inspire the design of robot control systems (6), and (iii) using robots to evaluate computational models of neural systems and to test hypotheses that are difficult to investigate in vivo (4, 8). A key focus of this work has been to understand the neural substrates of action selection in the vertebrate brain, particularly the basal ganglia (1, 8, 9, 11) and the reticular formation (7). I have also applied this general approach to the understanding of active sensing in mammals, particularly in the context of vibrissal (whisker) sensing in rats (2, 4, 5). I co-cofounded the conference series "Living Machines" which focuses on research in biomimetic and biohybrid systems (1), and currently direct the Sheffield Centre for Robotics.

Selected Bibliography

1. Prescott, T. J., Lepora, N., Mura, A. and Verschure, P. M. J. (2012) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, LNAI vol. 7375.
2. Prescott, T. J., Diamond, M. E. and Wing, A. M. (2011) Theme issue on Active Touch Sensing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
3. Prescott, T. J., Bryson, J. J., Seth, A. (2007). Theme issue on modelling natural action selection. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
4. Pearson, M. J., Mitchinson, B., Pipe, A. G., Melhuish, C., and Prescott, T. J. (2007). Whiskerbot: A robotic active touch system modelled on the rat whisker sensory system. Adaptive Behavior, 15:223-240.
5. Mitchinson, B., Martin, C. J., Grant, R., and Prescott (2007). Feedback control in active sensing: Tactile exploration in the rat is modulated by environmental contact. Proceedings of the Royal Society. B: Biological Sciences, 274(1613), 1035-41.
6. Prescott, T. J. (2007). Forced moves or good tricks in design space? Landmarks in the evolution of neural mechanisms for action selection. Adaptive Behavior. 15: 9-31.
7. Humphries, M. D., Gurney, K. & Prescott, T. J. (2006). The brainstem reticular formation is a small-world, not scale-free, network. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 273, 503-511.
8. Prescott, T. J., Gonzalez, F. M., Gurney, K., Humphries, M. D., & Redgrave, P. (2006). A robot model of the basal ganglia: behavior and intrinsic processing. Neural Networks, 19, 31-61.
9. Gurney, K., Prescott, T. J., Wickens, J., and Redgrave, P. (2004). Computational models of the basal ganglia: from membranes to robots. Trends in Neurosciences, 27, 453–459.
10. Prescott, T.J., Redgrave, P., & Gurney, K. (1999). Layered control architectures in robots and vertebrates, Adaptive Behavior, 7, 99-127.
11. Redgrave, P., Prescott, T.J. and Gurney, K. (1999). The basal ganglia: a vertebrate solution to the selection problem?, Neuroscience, 89, 1009–1023.