Nick Barraclough
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

• University of Edinburgh
  BSc in Biological Sciences (Neuroscience)
• University of Nottingham
  PhD in Neurophysiology

Career

• University of St Andrews, Postdoc, Department of Psychology, 2002 - 2005
• University of St Andrews, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Psychology, 2005 – 2006
• University of Hull, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, 2006 - 2011
• University of York, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, 2011 -2016
• University of York, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology,
  2016 –

Departmental roles

• Deputy Chair of the Board of Examiners
• Deputy Postgraduate Lead: Current PhD Students

University roles

• Natural Sciences Neuroscience pathway leader
• Natural Sciences Psychology subject facilitator

Research

Overview

My research investigates how we perceive and interpret social information from of other people. I am particularly interested in the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the processing of human actions and how these systems interact with the mirror neuron and mentalising networks, and systems underpinning face, body and scene processing.

We use a range of different techniques in humans including psychophysics, immersive virtual reality, neuroimaging, statistical and computational modelling and compare human perception with deep neural networks (DNNs) and single-unit data from non-human primates.

Projects

Current research questions include: 

1. What are the cognitive representations underpinning action perception?
2. How does action perception vary between individuals, including in Autism?
3. How are social signals from bodies, faces, actions and scenes integrated? 
4. How and why do large groups of people synchronise their behaviours?

Research group(s)

Vision and Face Perception group

Irena Danilovska, PhD student

Grants

• AHRC (2014-2018) “Care for the future” Large Research Grant AH/M004457/1, £1,800,000
• ESRC (2011-2014) “Investigating biases in the perception of human behaviour using immersive virtual reality” £238,000

Collaborators

• Stephan de la Rosa (Max Planck institute of Biological Cybernetics) Action perception
• Hauke Egermann (University of Cologne) Audience face perception
• Lisa Peschel (University of York) Audience face perception

Available PhD research projects

I am happy to supervise students who are interested in the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying action perception and social perception more generally.

Publications

Selected publications

• Nick E Barraclough (2026). A latent 5-dimensional space for action representation: Geometric validity and dissociation from kinematics. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.01.123456
• Irena C. Danilovska, Nick E. Barraclough, Manousos Klados. (2026) A Stage-Mapped Framework for Neuroentrepreneurship: Linking Real-Time Decision Processes to Entrepreneurial Behavior. Brain Organoid Syst Neurosci J. 4:0006. DOI: https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/bosn.0006
• Danilovska IC, Klados M, Preston C, Barraclough NE (2026) Development and validation of a domain-specific scale of founder characteristics associated with startup success. PLOS ONE. 21(6): e0351970. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0351970
• Barraclough, N. E., & Wightman, G. (2025). Testing a model of the cognitive structure of perceivable human actions. Visual Cognition, 33(8), 483–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2026.2636690
• Oakes, R.A., Peschel, L., Barraclough, N.E. (2024) Inter-subject correlation of audience facial expressions predict audience engagement during theatrical performances. iScience. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.109843
• Vinton, L. C., Preston, C., de la Rosa, S., Mackie, G., Tipper, S. P., Barraclough, N. E. (2023) Four fundamental dimensions underlie the perception of human actions. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 1-23 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02709-1
• Kayser, H. Egermann, N.E. Barraclough (2021) Audience facial expressions detected by automated face analysis software reflect emotions in music. Behavior research methods, 1-15 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01678-3
• Yukiko Kikuchi, Jennifer Ip, Gaetan Lagier, James C. Mossom, Sukhbinder Kumar, Christopher I. Petkov, Nick E. Barraclough, Quoc C. Vuong (2019) Interactions between Conscious and Subconscious Signals: Selective Attention under Feature-Based Competition Increases Neural Selectivity during Brain Adaptation. Journal of Neuroscience. Vol 29(28), pp 5506-5516 https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3052-18.2019
• Cole, E.J., Barraclough, N.E., Andrews, T.J. (2019) Reduced connectivity between mentalizing and mirror systems in autism spectrum condition. Neuropsychologia.  Vol. 122 pp. 88-97 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.11.008
• Cole, E.J., Barraclough, N.E., & Enticott, P. G. (2018). Investigating mirror system (MS) activity in adults with ASD when inferring others' intentions using both TMS and EEG. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Vol 48(7), pp 2350-2367 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3492-2
• Cole, E.J., Slocombe, K.E., Barraclough, N.E. (2017) Abilities to explicitly and implicitly infer intentions from action in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Vol 48(5) pp 1712-1726 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3425-5

Full publications list

See my Google Scholar Profile, York Research Database profile

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Perception and Cognition
• Autism and Social Neuroscience

External activities

Memberships

• Society for Neuroscience
• Experimental Psychology Society
• Applied Vision Association

Editorial duties

• ESRC and Carnegie Trust peer review colleges
• Ad hoc reviewer for various Grant awarding bodies and Journals