Joel Winston

joel.winston@kcl.ac.uk

joel_winston

Website

Research Interests

I am clinician scientist, working clinically as clinical neurophysiologist at King’s College Hospital and academically at King’s College London. Academically, my background and training is in cognitive neuroscience, specifically in affective neuroscience and interoception. I’ve spent a while trying to understand how the brain decides that the body is ill. More recently, I have started trying to use this research background to understand and help the clinical populations that I see – patients with epilepsy and related disorders (in particular dissociative seizures). This work uses a variety of clinically and experimentally acquired data, primarily EEG, cognitive task performance and healthcare record data

Most significant discovery

I am probably best known for my (now rather old!) work on the human face processing
system; in particular, for demonstrating that the healthy human amygdala responds to
perceived untrustworthiness in a viewed face. This occurs even when trust-related
judgments are not relevant to the ongoing task.

Educational Interests

• Cognitive neuroscience methods
• Clinical EEG – uses and interpretation
• Epilepsy and related disorders

Top 4 Publications

• Whatley BP et al, Distinct Patterns of Brain Metabolism in Patients at Risk of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, Frontiers in Neurology, 12:623358 (2021)
• Sanders R et al. Magnetoencephalographic correlates of perceptual state during auditory bistability, Scientific Reports, 8(1), 976 (2018)
• Pishnamazi M et al. Attentional bias towards and away from fearful faces is modulated by developmental amygdala damage, Cortex, 81, 24-34 (2016)
• Winston JS et al. Automatic and intentional brain responses during evaluation of trustworthiness of faces, Nature Neuroscience, 5 (3), 277-283 (2002)

Methods / Expertise

• EEG – scalp and intracranial
• Functional MRI
• Cognitive task design