This is an old site. My new website can be found at http://www.taylorsciencewriter.com/
I am a research scientist and science writer affiliated to Oxford's Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics. My research focus is the human brain, which I have studied at many levels, from neuroimmunology and neuroanatomy to systems and cognitive neuroscience and social psychology.
My main interest is the neuroscience of belief and its pathologies: how do beliefs form, what factors affect strong beliefs, and when do such beliefs become dangerous? I am particularly interested in the role of belief in severe forms of ideologically-motivated human harm-doing such as terrorism, genocides and destructive cults. My first book, Brainwashing, was published by Oxford University Press in 2004. My second, Cruelty, is due to be published, again by OUP, in February 2009.
I am also currently working on an fMRI project on the neuroscience of belief in collaboration with Dr Peter Hansen (Oxford and Birmingham) and Professor John Stein (Oxford), and collaborating with Baroness Susan Greenfield's OXCSOM project.
Until 2002 I worked on the neurobiological basis - neuroscience, immunology, biochemistry and epidemiology - of developmental dyslexia with my senior colleague John Stein and others. Among other things, my research suggested negative associations between dyslexia and having a family history of high blood pressure and cancer. I proposed a theoretical model of neuroinflammation, involving platelet-activating factor, to explain these findings and other puzzling observations, including the apparently beneficial effects of omega-3 fatty acids on neurodevelopmental disorders. I have also done theoretical work in cognitive neuroscience, e.g. on consciousness.
I left the dyslexia project at the end of 2002 to work on a book on the science of brainwashing, thought control and interpersonal influence. Brainwashing: the science of thought control was published by Oxford University Press in November 2004. It has since been long-listed for the 2005 Aventis Science Prize and short-listed for the MIND Book of the Year Award. I was also short-listed and highly commended in the 2005 Times Higher Educational Supplement Young Academic Author awards. For more about the book, click here.
In March 2002 I won the Times Higher Educational Supplement / Oxford University Press Science Writing Prize. The essay, on nutrition and dyslexia, was printed in the THES, and is available in PDF format here.
In October 2002 I won the Times Higher Educational Supplement / Palgrave Macmillan Social Sciences and Humanities Writing Prize. The essay, on the relationship between imagination and knowledge, was published in edited form in the THES, and the full version is available in PDF format here.
Taylor, K.E. (2009), Cruelty: human evil and the human brain. Oxford, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Taylor, K.E. (2008), Review of Women as Weapons of War, by Kelly Oliver. Critical Studies in Terrorism, 1, 3.
Taylor, K.E. (2007), Disgust is a factor in extreme prejudice, British Journal of Social Psychology, 46(3), 597-617.
Taylor, K.E. (2006), Intergroup atrocities in war: a neuroscientific perspective, Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 22, 230-44, 2006.
Taylor, K.E. (2006), On brainwashing, in The Barbarization of Warfare, ed. G. Kassimeris; New York University Press, 2006.
Taylor, K.E. (2005), Thought crime, The Guardian, 8 October 2005.
Taylor, K.E. (2004), Brainwashing: the science of thought control. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Taylor, K.E. (2004), So, do you know who's pulling your strings?, Times Higher Education Supplement, 26 November 2004.
Taylor, K.E. (2004). Familial cancer and developmental dyslexia: an observational pilot study, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 46(2), pp. 119-127. Available as PDF
here.
Francks, C., Fisher, S.E., Marlow, A.J., MacPhie, I.L., Taylor, K.E., Richardson, A.J., Stein, J.F. and Monaco, A.P. (2003), Familial and genetic effects on motor coordination, laterality, and reading-related cognition, American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 1970-7.
Taylor, K.E. and Walter, J. (2003), Occupation choices of adults with and without symptoms of dyslexia, Dyslexia, 9(3), 177-85.
Taylor, K.E. (2003). The possible role of abnormal platelet-activating factor metabolism in psychiatric disorders. Phospholipid Spectrum Disorders in Psychiatry and Neurology. 2nd ed: Marius Press, 2nd Edition.
Taylor, K.E. and Stein, J.F. (2002).
Dyslexia and familial high blood pressure: an observational pilot study, Archives of Disease in Childhood, 86(1), 30-3. Available as PDF
here.
Taylor, K.E., Richardson, A.J. and Stein, J.F. (2001). Could platelet-activating factor play a role in developmental dyslexia?, Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, 64(3), 173-80. Available as PDF here.
Taylor, K.E. (2001). Applying continuous modelling to consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, 2, 45-60.
Taylor, K.E., Higgins, C.J., Calvin, C.M., Hall, J.A., Easton, T., McDaid, A.M. and Richardson, A.J. (2000). Dyslexia in adults is associated with clinical signs of fatty acid deficiency, Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, 63(1/2), 75-78. Available as PDF here.
Taylor, K.E. (2000). A continuum approach to modelling cognitive disorders,
Medical Hypotheses, 54, 642-644. Available as PDF here.
Taylor, K.E. (2000). Immune-biochemical interactions in schizophrenia, Schizophrenia Research, 44, 245-6.
Taylor, K.E. and Richardson, A.J. (2000). Visual function, fatty acids and dyslexia, Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, 63(1/2), 89-94.
Taylor, K.E. (2000). A data-donor scheme for brain researchers, Lancet, 355, 849-850. Available as PDF here.
Taylor, K.E. and Stein, J.F. (1999). Attention, intention and salience in the posterior parietal cortex: a computational approach, Neurocomputing,
26-27, 901-910. The PDF is here.
Taylor, K. E. and P. M. B. Cahusac (1994). The effects of the metabotropic glutamate receptor agonist 1S,3R-ACPD on neurones in the rat primary somatosensory cortex in vivo, Neuropharmacology, 33, 103-108.
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