I trained in Medicine at Oxford University Medical School, after a first degree in Philosophy and Psychology. I was a consultant neurologist in Edinburgh, from 1996, and was Professor of Neurology at Exeter University Medical School from 2005-2023. My specialised clinical work is in cognitive and behavioural neurology, including neurological disorders of sleep. My research interests include amnesia associated with epilepsy (http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/time/) and disorders of visual imagery (http://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/research/neuroscience/theeyesmind/). I have an active background interest in the science and philosophy of consciousness, publishing several wide-ranging reviews of the field and an accessible introduction to the subject, intended for a general readership (Consciousness: a user’s guide, Yale University Press, 2002). I have written a study of the brain for the general reader, A Portrait of the Brain (Yale, 2008), edited Ethical Dilemmas in Neurology (W.B.Saunders, 2000) with Linda Emanuel and Epilepsy and Memory (OUP, 2012) with Marilyn Jones-Gotman and Narinder Kapur. I was Chairman of the British Neuropsychiatry Association from 2007-2011. I have recently moved into a freelance phase of life as an expert witness and independent researcher based in Edinburgh. A new book on the science of imagination, The Shape of Things Unseen – a new science of imagination, was published by Bloomsbury in January 2025, and I am embarking on a fresh wave of work on ‘extreme imagery’.
