Bio

Ed Lalor received the B.E. degree in electronic engineering from University College Dublin, Ireland in 1998 and the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1999. After periods working as a silicon design engineer for a Dublin-based company and a primary school teacher for children with learning difficulties, Ed joined MIT's Media Lab Europe, where he worked from 2002-2005 as a research scientist investigating brain-computer interfacing and attentional mechanisms in the brain. This research led to a PhD in biomedical engineering which was completed through UCD in 2006.

Subsequently, he spent 2 years in New York working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and as an adjunct assistant professor in the City College of New York.

He returned to a position as an IRCSET Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow based in the Institute of Neuroscience and the School of Engineering in Trinity College Dublin in 2008.

My CV/Resume

Research Interests

• Processing of electrophysiological signals reflecting activity of human sensory systems. Specifically, use of sophisticated engineering methods to answer fundamental questions on the processing of stimuli by the human brain, allowing for the creation of methods that allow for great flexibility and specificity in the experimental interrogation of human neurophysiology.
• Sensory deficits in schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected first degree relatives have been shown to have deficits in electrophysiological markers of early sensory processing. Novel responses developed in my research have been shown to behave quite differently to standard methods in this regard. This suggests a high degree of specificity in the cellular underpinnings of these deficits. I hope to further investigate the cellular and genetic origins of these deficits.
• Multisensory integration. Sensory events often do not occur in isolation and the complex integration of inputs from multiple senses is still poorly understood. Through the development of novel, environmentally valid stimuli, I aim to further investigate this process.
• Effects of selective attention on sensory and perceptual processing. In experiments, standard, discrete stimulation is not always ideal for examining cognitive processes. For example, assessing endogenous attention using suddenly onsetting stimuli is necessarily hampered by the undoubted contribution of an exogenous component. This has recently been addressed using a continuous stimulation paradigm based on my research.
• Computational modelling of the visual system at various hierarchical levels. As well as modelling the visual system as a whole using EEG, I have also recently become interested in modelling the visual system at a lower level. This work involves computational modelling of ganglion cells in the retina and aims to contribute to the understanding of the neural code.
• Brain-computer interfacing. A number of laboratories around the world are working towards a brain-computer interface that will enable people to communicate who would otherwise be unable. I, along with my colleagues, have developed a novel brain-computer interface known as the visual-spatial attention control (V-SAC) BCI.
• Methods and computational modelling in functional brain imaging. Computational model-based fMRI for research on decision making and machine learning methods in fMRI analysis.

Collaborators

• Professor John J. Foxe - Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research/City College of New York.
• Professor Barak A. Pearlmutter - Hamilton Institute, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
• Professor Liam Paninski - Columbia University, New York.
• Dr. Yashar Ahmadian - Columbia University, New York.
• Dr. Simon P. Kelly - Columbia University, New York.
• Professor Hugh Garavan - Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience.
• Dr. Hans-Peter Frey - City College of New York.
• Dr. Paul Dockree - Trinity College Dublin.
• Professor Ian Robertson - Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience.

Selected Publications

Book Chapters

• Lalor, E.C., Pearlmutter, B.A., & Foxe, J.J. (2009). Reverse correlation and the VESPA method. In: Handy, T. C. (Ed.), Brain Signal Analysis: Advances in Neuroelectric and Neuromagnetic Methods, MIT press.

Journals

• Frey, H.P., Kelly, S.P., Lalor, E.C. & Foxe, J.J. (2010). Early spatial attentional modulation of inputs to the fovea. Journal of Neuroscience, accepted.
• Lalor, E.C. & Foxe, J.J. (2010). Reply: On interpreting responses to low contrast stimuli in terms of magnocellular activity - a few remarks. Vision Research, in press.
• Lalor, E.C. & Foxe, J.J. (2010). Neural responses to uninterrupted natural speech can be extracted with precise temporal resolution. European Journal of Neuroscience, 31(1):189-193.
• Lalor, E.C., Ahmadian, Y., & Paninski, L. (2009). The relationship between optimal and biologically plausible decoding of stimulus velocity in the retina. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 26(11):B25-B42.
• Lalor, E.C., Power, A.P., Reilly, R.B., & Foxe, J.J. (2009). Resolving precise temporal processing properties of the auditory system using continuous stimuli. Journal of Neurophysiology, 102(1):349-359.
• Lalor, E.C. & Foxe, J.J. (2009). Visual evoked spread spectrum analysis (VESPA) responses to stimuli biased towards magnocellular and parvocellular pathways. Vision Research, 49 (2009):127-133.
• Lalor, E.C., Yeap, S., Reilly, R.B., Pearlmutter, B.A., & Foxe, J.J. (2008). Dissecting the cellular contributions to early visual sensory processing deficits in schizophrenia using the VESPA evoked response. Schizophrenia Research, 98(2008): 256-264.
• Lalor E.C., Kelly S.P., Pearlmutter, B.A., Reilly, R.B., & Foxe, J.J. (2007). Isolating endogenous visuo-spatial attentional effects using the novel Visual Evoked Spread Spectrum Analysis (VESPA) technique. European Journal of Neuroscience, 26(12):3536-3542.
• Lalor, E. C., Pearlmutter, B. A., Reilly, R. B., McDarby, G., & Foxe, J. J. (2006). The VESPA: a method for the rapid estimation of a visual evoked potential. NeuroImage, 32, 1549-1561. .pdf
• Kelly, S. P., Lalor, E. C., Reilly, R. B., & Foxe, J. J. (2006). Increases in alpha oscillatory power reflect an active retinotopic mechanism for distracter suppression during sustained visuospatial attention. Journal of Neurophysiology 95(6):3844-51.
• Lalor, E.C., Kelly, S.P., Finucane, C., Burke, R., Smith, R., Reilly, R.B., & McDarby, G. (2005). Steady-state VEP-based brain-computer interface control in an immersive 3d gaming environment. EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing, 2005(19):3156-3164.
• Kelly, S.P., Lalor, E.C., Reilly, R.B., & Foxe, J.J. (2005). Visual spatial attention tracking using high-density SSVEP data for independent brain-computer communication. IEEE Trans. Neu. Syst. & Rehab. Eng., 13(2):172-178.
• Kelly, S.P., Lalor, E., Finucane, C., McDarby, G., and Reilly, R.B. (2005). Visual spatial attention control in an independent brain-computer interface. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., 52(9):1588-1596.

Contact Information

Email: edlalor@tcd.ie