Lawrence Parsons

Lawrence Parsons is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. He was trained in cognitive and neural sciences at UCSD and MIT, and associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center. From 2001-2003, he was responsible for establishing a cognitive neuroscience program at the National Science Foundation.  His early work on action, spatial reasoning, and object recognition, was followed by recent research on neural basis of reasoning, music and dance performance, joint action (duetting, conversation), improvisation, language, emotion, and cerebellar function. He is a trustee of the International Foundation for Music Research, on the Editorial Board of the Social Neuroscience, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, He has published papers in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Journal of Neuroscience, Proceedings of the Royal Society (UK), Scientific American, and Trends in Cognitive Science. In 2001, he organised the first scientific conference on music and the brain (2000), the first public forum on music and brain (Royal Institution of Great Britain, 2001), and the first research conference on neurosciences of dance (Wellcome Trust Institution, 2009). He has written for BBC Classic magazine, and has had his research featured in, among others, BBC Radio, BBC-TV, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Times of London, TV program REDES (2008), Arte, New Scientist, and in STERN, Panorama, VSD, Illustreret Videnskab, Tanz-Journal, Ballettanz Magazine, and Lancet magazines, as well as in book and journal translations in Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian.  His research has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, National Institute of Health (US), National Science Foundation (US), National Academy of Recording Arts and Science, National Library of Medicine (US), ChevronTexaco Foundation, International Foundation of Music Research, Sloan Foundation, Fairchild Foundation, and McDonnell Foundation.

For further information, please visit prof. Parson's homepage