Mark Stokes
Mark Stokes
BA/BSc(Hons), PhD
Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience
- Tutorial Fellow, New College
Mark's research explores the role of selective attention in perception, working memory and flexible decision-making. Mark is particularly interested in how these core cognitive functions are integrated for goal-directed adaptive behaviour.
As Head of Attention Group at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Mark coordinates a programme of cognitive neuroscientific research exploring the mechanisms that underpin high-level cognition in the human brain. This research programme exploits a broad range of complementary methods for measuring and stimulating brain activity with high temporal and spatial resolution. Mark's group are also exploring new directions to translate their research in fundamental cognitive neuroscience to psychiatric models of mood disorders.
Mark maintains a neuroscience blog, The Brain Box, to disseminate his own research to a more general audience, as well as to comment on other public-interest topics in neuroscience from the latest breakthroughs to ongoing controversies. Mark also co-hosts Brain Metrics at Nature. Mark also uses Twitter to engage his science with a wider public audience: @StokesNeuro.
Biography
In 2003, Mark completed a combined BA/BSc(Hons) at the University of Melbourne, with majors in English, Philosophy and Psychology. Mark moved to the UK in 2004 for his PhD with John Duncan and Rhodri Cusack at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University. In 2007, Mark was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at St John's College Oxford, working on attention and memory with Kia Nobre in the Brain and Cognition Laboratory. Mark was awarded an MRC Career Development Fellowship in 2012 to explore the neural basis of selective inhibition as a principal investigator in Psychiatry and Experimental Psychology, awarded the title of University Research Lecturer and elected to a Science Research Fellowship at St John's College.
Memberships
Society for Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience Society
Science is Vital
Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE)
Sense about Science
Links
St John's College
Department of Psychiatry
Department of Experimental Psychology
Oxford Neuroscience
The Brain Box
Brain Metrics
In the news
The Guardian (2013): There's a lot more to neuroscience than media 'neuromania'
The Guardian (2013): The folly of science on a shoestring
The Independent (2013): Our research is on ice due to shortage of helium
The Guardian (2012): 'Made-for-TV' experiments can make really bad science
Key publications
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'Activity-silent' working memory in prefrontal cortex: a dynamic coding framework.
Journal article
Stokes MG., (2015), Trends Cogn Sci, 19, 394 - 405
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Dynamic coding for cognitive control in prefrontal cortex.
Journal article
Stokes MG. et al, (2013), Neuron, 78, 364 - 375
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Long-term memory prepares neural activity for perception.
Journal article
Stokes MG. et al, (2012), Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 109, E360 - E367
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Attention restores discrete items to visual short-term memory.
Journal article
Murray AM. et al, (2013), Psychol Sci, 24, 550 - 556
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Shape-specific preparatory activity mediates attention to targets in human visual cortex.
Journal article
Stokes M. et al, (2009), Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 106, 19569 - 19574
Recent publications
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Previously Reward-Associated Stimuli Capture Spatial Attention in the Absence of Changes in the Corresponding Sensory Representations as Measured with MEG.
Journal article
Tankelevitch L. et al, (2020), J Neurosci, 40, 5033 - 5050
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Unimodal and Bimodal Access to Sensory Working Memories by Auditory and Visual Impulses.
Journal article
Wolff MJ. et al, (2020), J Neurosci, 40, 671 - 681
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Drifting codes within a stable coding scheme for working memory
Journal article
WOLFF M. et al, (2020), PLoS Biology
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Reward Boosts Neural Coding of Task Rules to Optimize Cognitive Flexibility.
Journal article
Hall-McMaster S. et al, (2019), J Neurosci, 39, 8549 - 8561
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Premembering Experience: A Hierarchy of Time-Scales for Proactive Attention.
Journal article
Nobre AC. and Stokes MG., (2019), Neuron, 104, 132 - 146