CV - Dr. Robert Seymour

Neuroimaging postdoctoral researcher with expertise in EEG, cryogenic MEG and wearable OPM-MEG. My research uses naturalistic paradigms and innovative data analysis approaches understand neurodevelopment, memory encoding and social interactions.

Education

PhD Neuroscience 2016 – 2019
Aston University, UK and Macquarie University, Australia

MSc Cognitive Neuroscience 2015 – 2016
University of York, UK

• Grade: Distinction and awarded the Cognitive Neuroscience Project Prize.

Research Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher 2024 – Present
Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity - University of Oxford

• Establishing the optically pumped magnetometer-based magnetoencephalography (OPM-MEG) lab at Oxford University.

Post-doctoral Research Fellow 2020 – 2024
Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL, UK

• Developed optically pumped magnetometer-based magnetoencephalography (OPM-MEG) into a wearable and fully mobile system.

• Combined OPM-MEG with motion-capture and virtual reality technologies to study autobiographical memory encoding in naturalistic settings.

• Developed time-resolved analysis techniques for naturalistic neuroscience.

MEG Technical Research Officer 2018 – 2020
Macquarie University,Sydney, Australia

• Collected 40 neuroimaging datasets from neurotypical and autistic children aged 3-6 using a custom pediatric MEG.

• Developed data cleaning and analysis pipelines to measure both evoked and induced responses.

PhD Research 2016 – 2020
Aston University, UK and Macquarie University, Australia

• Thesis Title: MEG studies of atypical cortical activity in autism

• Studying oscillations and brain connectivity, I investigated visual and auditory processing in neurotypical and autistic adolescents.

• I also studied embodied perspective-taking in neurotypical and autistic populations.

Publications

As First Author

• Seymour, R. A., Alexander, N., & Maguire, E. A. (2022). Robust estimation of 1/f activity improves oscillatory burst detection. European Journal of Neuroscience, 56(10), 5836-5852.

• Seymour, R. A., Alexander, N., Mellor, S., O’Neill, G. C., Tierney, T. M., Barnes, G. R., & Maguire, E. A. (2022). Interference suppression techniques for OPM-based MEG: Opportunities and challenges. NeuroImage, 247, 118834.

• Hepschke, J. L*., Seymour, R. A*., He, W. A., Etchell, A., Sowman, P. F., & Fraser, C. (2022). Cortical oscillatory dysrhythmias in visual snow syndrome: A MEG study. Brain Communications, 4(1), fcab296. * Joint First Authors.

• Seymour, R. A., Alexander, N., Mellor, S. J., O’Neill, G. C., Tierney, T. M., Barnes, G. R., & Maguire, E. A. (2021). Using OPMs to measure neural activity in standing, mobile participants. NeuroImage, 244, 118604.

• Seymour, R. A., Rippon, G., Gooding-Williams, G., Sowman, P. F., & Kessler, K. (2020). Reduced auditory steady state responses in autism spectrum disorder. Molecular Autism, 11(1), 1-13.

• Seymour, R. A., Rippon, G., Gooding-Williams, G., Schoffelen, J. M., & Kessler, K. (2019). Dysregulated oscillatory connectivity in the visual system in autism spectrum disorder. Brain, 142(10), 3294-3305.

• Seymour, R. A., Wang, H., Rippon, G., & Kessler, K. (2018). Oscillatory networks of high-level mental alignment: A perspective-taking MEG study. NeuroImage, 177, 98-107.

• Seymour, R. A., Rippon, G., & Kessler, K. (2017). The detection of phase amplitude coupling during sensory processing. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 11, 487.

Collaborative papers

• Spedden, M. E., O'Neill, G. C., Timms, R. C., West, T. O., Mellor, S. J., Tierney, T. M., ... & Barnes, G. R. (2024). Non-invasive evidence for rhythmic interactions between the human brain, spinal cord, and muscle. bioRxiv, 2024-05.

• Mellor, S., Tierney, T. M., Seymour, R. A., Timms, R. C., O'Neill, G. C., Alexander, N., ... & Barnes, G. R. (2023). Real-time, model-based magnetic field correction for moving, wearable MEG. NeuroImage, 278, 120252.

• Rapaport, H., Seymour, R. A., Benikos, N., He, W., Pellicano, E., Brock, J., & Sowman, P. F. (2023). Investigating predictive coding in younger and older children using MEG and a multi-feature auditory oddball paradigm. Cerebral Cortex, 33(12), 7489-7499.

• O’Neill, G. C., Mellor, S., Seymour, R. A., Alexander, N., Tierney, T. M., Timms, R. C., ... & Barnes, G. R. (2023). Is high-frequency activity evidence of an anterior temporal lobe network or micro-saccades?. bioRxiv, 2023-01.

• O'Neill, G. C., Seymour, R. A., Mellor, S., Alexander, N., Tierney, T. M., Bernachot, L., ... & Barnes, G. R. (2023). Combining video telemetry and wearable MEG for naturalistic imaging. bioRxiv, 2023-08.

• Rapaport, H., Pellieano, E., Seymour, R. A., Benikos, N., He, W., Sun, Y., ... & Sowman, P. F. (2022). Hearing the world differently: examining predictive coding accounts of autism using MEG. bioRxiv, 2022-10.

• Tierney, T. M., Alexander, N., Mellor, S., Holmes, N., Seymour, R., O'Neill, G. C., ... & Barnes, G. R. (2021). Modelling optically pumped magnetometer interference in MEG as a spatially homogeneous magnetic field. NeuroImage, 244, 118484.

• Mellor, S., Tierney, T. M., O'Neill, G. C., Alexander, N., Seymour, R. A., Holmes, N., ... & Barnes, G. R. (2021). Magnetic field mapping and correction for moving OP-MEG. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 69(2), 528-536.

• Nunes, A. S., Kozhemiako, N., Moiseev, A., Seymour, R. A., Cheung, T. P., Ribary, U., & Doesburg, S. M. (2020). Neuromagnetic activation and oscillatory dynamics of stimulus-locked processing during naturalistic viewing. NeuroImage, 216, 116414.

• Zhu, J. D., Seymour, R. A., Szakay, A., & Sowman, P. F. (2020). Neuro-dynamics of executive control in bilingual language switching: An MEG study. Cognition, 199, 104247.

• He, W., Donoghue, T., Sowman, P. F., Seymour, R. A., Brock, J., Crain, S., ... & Hillebrand, A. (2019). Co-increasing neuronal noise and beta power in the developing brain. BioRxiv, 839258.

• Rapaport, H., Seymour, R. A., Sowman, P. F., Benikos, N., Stylianou, E., Johnson, B. W., ... & He, W. (2019). Studying brain function in children using magnetoencephalography. JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), (146), e58909.

• Kessler, K., Seymour, R. A., & Rippon, G. (2016). Brain oscillations and connectivity in autism spectrum disorders (ASD): new approaches to methodology, measurement and modelling. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 71, 601-620.

• Krieger-Redwood, K., Jefferies, E., Karapanagiotidis, T., Seymour, R., Nunes, A., Ang, J. W. A., ... & Smallwood, J. (2016). Down but not out in posterior cingulate cortex: Deactivation yet functional coupling with prefrontal cortex during demanding semantic cognition. Neuroimage, 141, 366-377.

Citation Statistics

See Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IAAhK00AAAAJ&hl=en

Research Skills

• Neuroimaging Data Collection: MEG (Elekta/Yokogawa/CTF); OPM-MEG (Quspin G2,G3).

• Programming Languages: MATLAB (advanced), Python (advanced), html (intermediate).

• Code Management: Github, SVN – see https://github.com/neurofractal.

• Software Competencies: Fieldtrip, SPM, MNE-python, FSL, Freesurfer, HCP Workbench, Psychopy, ePrime, SPSS, JASP.

• Motion Capture/Virtual Reality: Optitrack, OpenPose, Unity (beginner).

• Open Science: BioRxiv, Figshare.

Conference Presentations

• Estimation of Phase Amplitude Coupling, Biomag 2016: Seoul, South Korea.

• Dysregulated Visual Connectivity as Measured by MEG. International Society for Autism Research 2018: Rotterdam, NL.

• Reduced auditory steady state responses in autism spectrum disorder. Australia Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2018: Melbourne, Aus. MEG UK, 2019: Cardiff, UK.

• Robust Estimation of 1/f Activity Improves Oscillatory Burst Detection, BIOMAG, Birmingham, UK, 2022.

• Encoding and Retrieval of Virtual Natural Experiences Using OPM-MEG. MEGUKI, 2023: Dublin, Ireland. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 2024: Toronto, Canada.

Invited Talks

• Dysregulated gamma-band activity during sensory processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Cambridge Development Forum, UK. August 2020.

• Interference suppression Techniques for OPM based MEG: Opportunities and challenges. Karolinska Institute, Sweden. June 2022.

• Developing Wearable (OPM) MEG for Naturalistic Neuroscience. University of Bonn, Germany; McGill University; University of Montreal, Canada; University of Melbourne, Australia; Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. All 2024.

Contributions to Open Science

• Regular MATLAB code contributor to the open-source SPM and Fieldtrip analysis toolboxes.

• Openly shared MATLAB code for a newly developed oscillatory burst detection tool, fBOSC (see https://github.com/neurofractal/fBOSC).

• Openly shared data and tutorial code for analysing OPM-MEG data (see https://github.com/FIL-OPMEG/tutorials_interference).

Research Grant Funding

• Cotutelle PhD scholarship - Aston University, UK and Macquarie University, Australia (including research costs, tuition fees and stipend), 2016-2020.

• Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Fund (Value: $5,500AUD), April 2019.

• Is visual snow a thalamo-cortical dysrhythmia of the visual processing system? A magnetoencephalogram study (Assistant Investigator, Value: $29,988AUD), Jan 2020.

• Understanding how the brain supports face-to-face social interactions. University College London Fellowship Incubator Award (Principal Investigator, Value: £2,000GBP), April, 2023.

Teaching Experience

Guest Lecturer, UCL

• MSc Clinical Neuroscience (2023-2024). I designed and delivered a 2hr lecture on the Hippocampus and Memory.

• Marked essays based on the lecture and provided critical feedback.

Tutor, UCL

• UCL Methods for Dummies (2021-2024): MEG Expert, including providing critical feedback on slides and selecting reading materials for the course.

• SPM MEEG Course (2021-2023): I delivered various lectures on pre-processing and data analysis, including interactive coding demonstrations.

Senior Teaching Assistant, Cherwell School, Oxford

• Helped deliver psychology classes and study skills sessions, with a focus on developing strategies for sixth form students with special educational needs (2013-2014).

Other Academic Engagement

• Journal reviewing: Neuroimage, Brain Communications, Cerebral Cortex, Scientific Reports, Molecular Autism, Journal of Neurophysiology, Journal of Neuroscience, Sensors, Imaging Neuroscience, Neuropsychopharmacology.

• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Member of the EDI Committee, UCL Department for Imaging Neuroscience. I have organised several inclusive meetups for early career researchers to promote networking and career progression.