Peter Stratton
Curriculum Vitae
Peter Stratton
5 McCracken St
Wishart, QLD, 4122, Australia
Born: 5th April 1969, Brisbane, Australia
AIMS
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EDUCATION
Home: +61 (0)7 3342 2412
Mobile: +61 (0) 432 232 451
p.stratton1@uq.edu.au
To understand complex dynamical activity in networks of neurons in the
brain and how such dynamics can perform purposeful computation.
To understand causes of nervous system dysfunction for guidance of
potential therapeutic measures.
2002
Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Computer Science.
University of Queensland, Australia.
“A situated cortical model exhibiting attention, learning and memory:
Implications for cognition.”
1990
Bachelor of Science (Hons) - Computer Science.
University of Queensland, Australia.
ACADEMIC
1/2012 – Present
APPOINTMENTS Research Fellow – Queensland Brain Institute, Australia.
I have been analysing micro-electrode recording data from patients undergoing
electrode implantation for deep brain stimulation for the treatment of
movement disorders. The primary goal of these analyses is to assist in the
targeting of the electrodes for optimal clinical outcome using measureable
electrophysiological characteristics. I also provide custom-written computer
software and analysis tools for other experimental data collected by the lab.
2/2007 – 12/2011
Research Fellow – Thinking Systems project, The University of Queensland,
Australia.
Working with a multi-disciplinary team of neuroscientists, psychologists,
computer scientists and engineers investigating neural mechanisms of spatial
and conceptual representation, I provided the bridge between these diverse
fields. My role was to understand and construct models of the computational
principles that are implemented by nervous systems, and apply these models
to complex engineering problems in robotics and information processing.
JOURNAL
ARTICLES
Timothy Tattersall, Peter Stratton, Terry Coyne, Raymond Cook, Paul
Silberstein, Peter Silburn, Francois Windels and Pankaj Sah. Imagined gait
modulates the dynamics of neuronal networks in the pedunculopontine
nucleus. Nature Neuroscience 17, 449–454, doi:10.1038/nn.3642, 2014.
Journal Impact Factor: 15. Analysis of recordings obtained in patients during
surgery for deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson’s disease reveals that the
dynamics of synchronous activity in the PPN change differentially during
motor planning vs actual motion, and suggests that gait disturbance may result
from disrupted network activity in the PPN.
Peter Stratton
Curriculum Vitae
David Ball, Russell Kliese, Francois Windels, Christopher Nolan, Peter
Stratton, Pankaj Sah, Janet Wiles. Rodent Scope: A User-Configurable Digital
Wireless Telemetry System for Freely Behaving Animals. PLoS ONE 9(2):
e89949. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089949, 2014.
Journal Impact Factor: 3.7. This paper describes the design and usage of a
novel wireless neural recording system for animals. Wireless technology
allows the use of much larger and more natural environments for behavioural
experiments.
Angelique Paulk, Y. Zhou, Peter Stratton, L. Liu and Bruno van Swinderen.
Multichannel brain recordings in behaving Drosophila reveal oscillatory
activity and local coherence in response to sensory stimulation and circuit
activation. J Neurophysiol 110(7), pp.1703-21, 2013.
Journal Impact Factor: 3.3. Using a novel whole-brain recording method in
Drosophila, we show that neural oscillations play roles in processing sensory
stimuli and modulating behaviour.
Peter Stratton, Allen Cheung, Janet Wiles, Eugene Kiyatkin, Pankaj Sah and
Francois Windels. Action potential waveform variability limits multi-unit
separation in freely behaving rats. PLoS ONE 7(6): e38482.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038482, 2012.
Journal Impact Factor: 4.411. Using experimental and theoretical analysis we
provide upper bounds on success of identifying unique individual neurons
from spike waveforms in multi-unit recordings.
Peter Stratton, Michael Milford, Gordon Wyeth and Janet Wiles. Using
strategic movement to calibrate a neural compass: a spiking network for
tracking head direction in rats and robots. PLoS ONE, vol.6(10), 2011.
Journal Impact Factor: 4.411. This work advances our understanding of the
neural systems involved in motion tracking and the representation of space,
links these systems to specific developmental behaviours and motor deficits,
and demonstrates how biological processes can afford practical solutions to
engineering problems.
Peter Stratton and Janet Wiles. Self-sustained non-periodic activity in a
network of spiking neurons: the contribution of local and long-range
connections and dynamic synapses. NeuroImage, vol. 52, pp. 1070-1079, 2010.
Journal Impact Factor: 5.694. Complex activity in the brain is hypothesised to
underlie its flexibility and sophisticated processing capability, and is associated
with memory retrieval, planning, problem solving and day dreaming. Few
brain models have been able to indefinitely self-sustain such activity; in this
study we demonstrate structural features sufficient to support realistic cortical
dynamics.
Peter Stratton, Gordon Wyeth and Janet Wiles. Calibration of the head
direction network: a role for symmetric angular head velocity cells. Journal of
Computational Neuroscience, vol. 28, pp. 527-538, 2010.
Peter Stratton
Curriculum Vitae
Journal Impact Factor: 2.750. The proposed calibration mechanism of the
mammalian head direction system suggests a requirement for a certain neuron
type in the brain (called symmetric head angular velocity cells), the existence
of which has previously been unexplained.
BOOK CHAPTERS Francois Windels, Peter Stratton and Pankaj Sah. Auditory stimulation
& CONFERENCE modulates amygdala network dynamics. In BMC Neuroscience 15, p.52, 2014.
PAPERS
(Abstract only).
Peter Stratton and Janet Wiles. Complex spiking models: a role for diffuse
thalamic projections in complex cortical activity. In Neural Information
Processing. Theory and Algorithms, pp.41-48, 2010.
Janet Wiles, David Ball, Scott Heath, Chris Nolan and Peter Stratton. Spiketime robotics: a rapid response circuit for a robot that seeks temporally
varying stimuli. In 17th International Conference on Neural Information
Processing (ICONIP), 2010.
Peter Stratton, Michael Milford, Janet Wiles and Gordon Wyeth. Automatic
calibration of a spiking head-direction network for representing robot
orientation. In Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and
Automation, Sydney, Australia, 2009.
Peter Stratton and Janet Wiles. A role for symmetric head-angular-velocity
cells: tuning the head-direction network. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience,
2009 (COSYNE’09). (Abstract only).
Peter Stratton and Janet Wiles. Comparing kurtosis score to traditional
statistical metrics for characterizing the structure in neural ensemble activity.
In M. Marinaro et al., editors, Dynamic Brain – from Neural Spikes to Behaviors,
Springer LNCS V 5286, pp.115-122, 2008.
Peter Stratton and Tom Downs. Biologically-plausible Hebbian learning and
hierarchical feature extraction. In T. Downs et al., editors, Proceedings of the
Ninth Australian Conference on Neural Networks, University of Queensland,
pp.250-254, 1998.
Peter Stratton and Tom Downs. The neural basis of expectation with
preliminary applications. In B. Verma and X. Yao, editors, Intl Conference on
Computational Intelligence and Multimedia Applications, pp.135-139, 1997.
SUBMITTED
Peter Stratton and Janet Wiles. "Global segregation of cortical activity and
metastable dynamics." Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience (submitted).
Peter Stratton, Francois Windels and Peter Silburn. "Computing with
metastability: competitive cross-coupling (CXC) in neural circuits." Frontiers in
Systems Neuroscience (submitted).
Peter Stratton
Curriculum Vitae
INVITED TALKS Relating structure, dynamics and disease in a model of the diffuse
thalamocortical network. Inaugural Brainnetome meets Genome workshop,
Queensland Brain Institute, Australia, May 2012.
Computation in spiking neural networks – active vision, complex dynamics,
spontaneous sequence replay and head movement calibration. Brain
Corporation, San Diego, USA, December 2011.
Complex dynamics in a critical regime – spontaneous, autonomous transition
to and from seizure in a Complex Spiking Model. International Workshop on
Seizure Prediction (IWSP5), Germany, September 2011.
Complex Spiking Models: Network properties governing emergent complex
dynamics. Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute, USA,
February 2011.
Critical regions and phase changes in simulations of spiking neural networks.
International School on Neural Nets, Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre
for Scientific Culture, Italy, December 2007.
TEACHING and
SERVICE
ELEC4001 / ENGG7301 Summer of Spikes course in Neuroscience and Neural
Modelling, summer semester 2009/2010. Co-lecturer and co-organiser,
including organisation of several national and international guest lecturers.
Review of numerous conference and journal articles, including recent reviews
for Science Express, Journal of Neurophysiology and PLoS ONE.
Weekly seminar series coordinator for current lab of 20 people, 1/2008 –
6/2009. Facilities arrangement. Correspondence with speakers. Assistance
with programme.
Co-supervision of numerous honours and a PhD student.
PROFESSIONAL
MEMBERSHIPS
Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Member, ARC Complex Open Systems Research Network.
BUSINESS
EXPERIENCE
1/2006 – 2/2007
Manager – MineScape Development – Mincom Ltd:
Managed a team of ten developers, testers and documentation writers to
provide all software development requirements for one of the leading mine
planning CAD packages in the world.
9/2004 – 12/2005
Project Leader – MineScape – Mincom Ltd:
Managed all work for a strategically pivotal new client based in Russia.
3/1996 – 8/2004
Senior Software Engineer – MineScape – Mincom Ltd & Mincom USA:
Programming of 3 large applications for visualisation, CAD and information
management in the mining industry. For several years was based in Denver,
Peter Stratton
Curriculum Vitae
USA, providing software and support to all North American clients
and
PhD student – University of Queensland (part time until submitted in 2001).
2/1995 – 2/1996
English Teacher – Nova – Tokyo, Japan
and
Preproduction Assistant – 20th Century Fox, London, UK.
3/1990 – 1/1995
Software Engineer – MineScape – Mincom Ltd