John S Butler

Lecturer in Mathematics and Statistics

Technological University Dublin

Biography

Official Biography

Since 2015, I have been a Lecturer at the School of Mathematics and Statistics in Technological University Dublin. I teach Statistics, Numerical Analysis and Mathematics to undergraduate and graduate students. I’m also involved in Science Communication and have presented at a number of events like a Pint of Science, Bright Club, Maths Week, Science Week and talks at primary and secondary schools. My research applies statistical and numerical methods to basic and clinical research in Neuroscience, Neurology and Optometry.

My undergraduate in Mathematics, MSc and PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics supervised by John J Miller at Trinity College Dublin gave me a strong theoretical, statistical and computational grounding but I wished for more tangible applications. For this reason, I took a side step in postdoctoral positions to basic and translation experimental research.

My first postdoctoral fellowship with Heinrich Bülthoff (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics) applying Virtual Reality, Psychophysics and Bayesian Methods to investigate visual-vestibular integration for self-motion perception.

From 2009-2013, I was a postdoctoral fellowship and an instructor with John Foxe and Sophie Molholm (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), I investigated sensory and multisensory integration and development in neurotypicals and people with Autism using behaviroual and neuroimaging methods (EEG, ECoG, fMRI). I also setup a Mobile Brain Imaging (MoBI) virtual reality room and was involved in some of the first studies to acquire EEG while walking in young and older participants.

From 2013-2015 I was a postdoctoral fellow and a lectuer in Neural Engineering at the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering with Richard Reilly. I applied my methods to investigate Movement Disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease and Dystonia.

Here is a video from the 2020 TU Dublin virtual postgraduate open day where I talk about my research interest:

Interests

Numerical Methods
Statistical Methods
Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience
Neurology
Optometry
Biomathematics

Education

PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics, 2005

Trinity College Dublin
MSc in High Performance Computing, 2000

Trinity College Dublin
BA in Mathematics, 1999

Trinity College Dublin

Research Projects

Centre for Eye Research Ireland

My optomentry research with Prof James Loughman is to investigate the causes, impacts and intervetions of glaucoma and myopia, for more detail go to the Centre for Eye Research Ireland (CERI).

Computational Neuroscience

This is an ongoing project in which I am writing iPython notebooks of classic mathematical models in Neuroscience.

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Sensory and Multisensory Development

My research investigates the developmental of unisensory and multisensory processing in typically developing children and children with developmental disorders such as Autism.

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Dystonia

An overview of my research on Dystonia.

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Mobile Brain Imaging (MoBI)

An overview of my research on Mobile Brain Imaging (MoBI)

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Parkinson’s Disease

An overview of my research on Parkinson’s Disease.

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Visual-Vestibular integration for self-motion processing

An overview of my research on Visual-Vestibular Integration

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Recent Publications

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Rebecca Brady, John S Butler

2023-07-07 RTE Brainstorm

How maths can help you make a decision

Mathematics provides models that describe what happens in our brains when we make decisions about what to do.

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Lars A Ross, Sophie Molholm, John S Butler, Victor A Del Bene, John J Foxe

2022-11-22 Neuroimage

Neural correlates of multisensory enhancement in audiovisual narrative speech perception: A fMRI investigation

This fMRI study investigated the effect of seeing articulatory movements of a speaker while listening to a naturalistic narrative stimulus. It had the goal to identify regions of the language network showing multisensory enhancement under synchronous audiovisual conditions. We expected this enhancement to emerge in regions known to underlie the integration of auditory and visual information such as the posterior superior temporal gyrus as well as parts of the broader language network, including the semantic system. To this end we presented 53 participants with a continuous narration of a story in auditory alone, visual alone, and both synchronous and asynchronous audiovisual speech conditions while recording brain activity using BOLD fMRI. We found multisensory enhancement in an extensive network of regions underlying multisensory integration and parts of the semantic network as well as extralinguistic regions not usually associated with multisensory integration, namely the primary visual cortex and the bilateral amygdala. Analysis also revealed involvement of thalamic brain regions along the visual and auditory pathways more commonly associated with early sensory processing. We conclude that under natural listening conditions, multisensory enhancement not only involves sites of multisensory integration but many regions of the wider semantic network and includes regions associated with extralinguistic sensory, perceptual and cognitive processing.

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Emily J Knight, Aaron I Krakowski, Edward G Freedman, John S Butler, Sophie Molholm, John J Foxe

2022-06-22 Molecular Autism

Attentional influences on neural processing of biological motion in typically developing children and those on the autism spectrum

Biological motion imparts rich information related to the movement, actions, intentions and affective state of others, which can provide foundational support for various aspects of social cognition and behavior. Given that atypical social communication and cognition are hallmark symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), many have theorized that a potential source of this deficit may lie in dysfunctional neural mechanisms of biological motion processing. Synthesis of existing literature provides some support for biological motion processing deficits in autism spectrum disorder, although high study heterogeneity and inconsistent findings complicate interpretation. Here, we attempted to reconcile some of this residual controversy by investigating a possible modulating role for attention in biological motion processing in ASD.

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Michael Moore, James Loughman, John S Butler, Arne Ohlendorf, Siegfried Wahl, Daniel I Flitcroft

2022-03-01 Ophthalmology Science

The refractive error and vision impairment estimation with spectacle data study

Purpose: To investigate whether spectacle lens sales data can be used to estimate the population distribution of refractive error among patients with ametropia and hence to estimate the current and future risk of vision impairment. Design: Cross-sectional study. Participants: A total of 141,547,436 spectacle lens sales records from an international European lens manufacturer between 1998 and 2016. Methods: Anonymized patient spectacle lens sales data, including refractive error information, was provided by a major European spectacle lens manufacturer. Data from the Gutenberg Health Survey was digitized to allow comparison of a representative, population-based sample with the spectacle lens sales data. A bootstrap analysis was completed to assess the comparability of both datasets. The expected level of vision impairment resulting from myopia at 75 years of age was calculated for both datasets using a previously published risk estimation equation combined with a saturation function. Main Outcome Measures: Comparability of spectacle lens sales data on refractive error with typical population surveys of refractive error and its potential usefulness to predict vision impairment resulting from refractive error. Results: Equivalent estimates of the population distribution of spherical equivalent refraction can be provided from spectacle lens data within limits. For myopia, the population distribution was equivalent to the Gutenberg Health Survey (≤ 5% deviation) for levels of –2.0 diopters (D) or less, whereas for hyperopia, the distribution was equivalent (≤ 5% deviation) for levels of +3.0 D or more. The estimated rates of vision impairment resulting from myopia were not statistically significantly different (chi-square, 182; degrees of freedom, 169; P = 0.234) between the spectacle lens dataset and Gutenberg Health Survey dataset. Conclusions: The distribution of refractive error and hence the risk of vision impairment resulting from refractive error within a population can be determined using spectacle lens sales data. Pooling this type of data from multiple industry sources could provide a cost-effective, timely, and globally representative mechanism for monitoring the evolving epidemiologic features of refractive error and associated vision impairment.

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