Personal Info

E-mail: Kate.watkins(at)st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Tel: 01865 271314

Web Links: http://www.neuroscience.ox.ac.uk/directory/kate-watkins; http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/language-and-development

Academic Background:
BA Natural Sciences (Psychology - University of Cambridge, 1987-90); MSc Neurological Sciences (University College London, 1992-94); PhD Cognitive Neuroscience (University College London, 1995-99).
Before and during my postgraduate studies I worked at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children as a neuropsychologist. I studied and assessed children with neurological problems, such as epilepsy, tumour or stroke, some of which resulted in memory and language problems. In my doctoral studies, I used neuropsychology and brain imaging to study a family with a genetic disorder of speech and language (KE family; FOXP2 gene). In 1999, I moved to the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, to work as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Tomas Paus. There I pursued my interest in the brain mechanisms involved in speech production and perception using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and other brain imaging techniques. I also worked on studies using neuropsychology and brain imaging to study normal brain development during adolescence. I returned to the UK in 2003 to work at the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of Brain at the John Radcliffe Hospital, where I carry out research into speech disorders such as developmental stuttering. I have been a lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology and a Fellow of St Anne’s since October 2006.

Teaching Interests:
Undergraduate: Introduction to Psychology; Language and Cognition; Neuropsychology.

Graduate: Experimental design for functional imaging studies; Statistics in practice; Neuropsychology; Language.

Research Interests:
Developmental disorders of speech and language, stuttering, specific language impairment; the role of the motor system in speech perception and production; brain development in adolescence; motor disorders.

Selected Publications:
K.E. Watkins, S.M. Smith, S. Davis, P. Howell, ‘Structural and functional abnormalities of the motor system in developmental stuttering’, Brain 131.1 (2008), 50-59
A.M. Rauschecker, A. Pringle, K.E. Watkins, ‘Changes in neural activity associated with learning to articulate novel auditory pseudowords by covert repetition’, Human Brain Mapping, Oct 19 (2007). [Epub ahead of print]
J.T. Devlin and K.E. Watkins, ‘Stimuating language: insights from TMS’, Brain 130.3 (2007), 610-22
H.L. Jamison, K.E. Watkins, D.V.M. Bishop and P.M. Matthews, ‘Hemispheric specialisation for processing auditory non-speech stimuli’, Cerebral Cortex 16.9 (2006), 1266-75
K.E. Watkins and T. Paus, ‘Modulation of motor excitability during speech perception: the role of Broca’s area’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16.6 (2004), 978-87
K.E. Watkins, A.P. Strafella and T. Paus, ‘Seeing and hearing speech excites the motor system involved in speech production’, Neuropsychologia 41 (2003), 989-94
K.E. Watkins, N.F. Dronkers and F. Vargha-Khadem, ‘Behavioural analysis of an inherited speech and language disorder: comparison with acquired aphasia’, Brain 125 (2002), 454-64
K.E. Watkins, F. Vargha-Khadem, J. Ashburner, R.E. Passingham, K.J. Friston, A. Connelly, R.S.J. Frackowiak, M. Mishkin and D.G. Gadian, ‘MRI analysis of an inherited speech and language disorder: structural brain abnormalities’, Brain 125 (2002), 465-78
F. Vargha-Khadem, D.G. Gadian, K.E. Watkins, A. Connelly, W. Van Paesschen and M. Mishkin, ‘Differential effects of early hippocampal pathology on episodic and semantic memory’, Science 277 (1997), 376-80