Luke Mason

Luke is a Lecturer in Biomarker Analysis in the Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Science at the Institute for Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. He joined Kings’s College London in August of 2022, before which he was a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (1). He received his PhD in Psychology from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Luke has worked on several of the largest research studies on autism in the world, including EU-AIMS (2), AIMS-2-TRIALS (3) and the BASIS (4) infant siblings study. His primary interest is in developing biomarkers of typical and atypical development, and using these in the contexts of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, and in global health to study the effects on development of environmental risk factors such as malnutrition (on the BRIGHT (5), Braintools (6) and STREAM (7) studies).

In the pursuit of precision neuroscience, Luke specialises in diverse, deeply-phenotyped studies with large sample sizes. His primary expertise is with EEG and eye tracking, with specialities in software development for stimulus presentation, data acquisition and analysis. He is the sole developer of the Task Engine stimulus presentation framework, which has been used in 12 countries to collect >10,000 datasets to date. Luke is the Core Analysis Lead for EEG and eye tracking in the AIMS-2-TRIALS LEAP study.

1. https://cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/
2. https://www.imi.europa.eu/projects-results/project-factsheets/eu-aims
3. https://www.aims-2-trials.eu/
4. https://www.basisnetwork.org/
5. https://www.globalfnirs.org/the-bright-project/
6. http://braintools.bbk.ac.uk/braintools-uk/   
7. https://research.reading.ac.uk/stream/projectoverview/

Research Interests

• Stratification biomarkers for psychiatric and developmental conditions, and environmental risk factors.
• EEG indices of basic sensory processing and attention.
• Eye tracking measures of cognitive speed and social information processing.
• Longitudinal neurocognitive development from infancy to adulthood.
• Multimodal measures of brain function (e.g. combined EEG and eye tracking)
• Software development for reliable, reproducible research in large, multi-site studies

Research Centres and Groups

• Group: EU-AIMS/AIMS-2-TRIALS
  Projects: LEAP, Eurosibs, Syna-G, Shiftability, Arbaclofen clinical trial, Safe Passage Study
• Group: BASIS (British Autism Study of Infant Siblings)
  Projects: STAARS (Studying Autism and ADHD Risk in Siblings), Inter-STAARS
• Group: BONDS Lab, CBCD, Birkbeck
  Projects: Braintools, STREAM
• Group: BRIGHT (Brain Imaging in Babies)
  Projects: BRIGHT, BRIGHT Kids
• Group: dHCP (Developing Human Connectome Project)

Expertise and Public Engagement

• Represented AIMS-2-TRIALS in interactions around biomarker qualification with European Medicines Agency and Federal Drug Administration
• Subject matter expert to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Healthy Birth, Growth and Development Knowledge Integration (HBGDKI) project
• Birkbeck One World Festival (2018): Event to celebrate Birkbeck’s diverse international culture. Demonstrated the BRAINTOOLS battery of experimental tasks for global health research.
• London Science Museum (2016): Presented a customized, child-friendly battery of eye tracking tasks for members of the public to take part in at the London Science Museum.

Publications

Mason, L., Moessnang, C., Chatham, C., Ham, L., Tillmann, J., Dumas, G., ... & Jones, E. J. (2022). Stratifying the autistic phenotype using electrophysiological indices of social perception. Science Translational Medicine, 14(658), eabf8987.

Garcés, P., Baumeister, S., Mason, L., Chatham, C. H., Holiga, S., Dukart, J., ... & Hipp, J. F. (2022). Resting state EEG power spectrum and functional connectivity in autism: a cross-sectional analysis. Molecular Autism, 13(1), 1-16.

Haartsen, R., Mason, L., Garces, P., Gui, A., Charman, T., Tillmann, J., ... & von Rhein, D. (2022). Qualitative differences in the spatiotemporal brain states supporting configural face processing emerge in adolescence in autism. Cortex, 155, 13-29.

Del Bianco, T., Mason, L., Lai, M. C., Loth, E., Tillmann, J., Charman, T., ... & EU‐AIMS LEAP Group. (2022). Unique dynamic profiles of social attention in autistic females. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Del Bianco, T., Mason, L., Charman, T., Tillman, J., Loth, E., Hayward, H., ... & Zwiers, M. P. (2021). Temporal profiles of social attention are different across development in autistic and neurotypical people. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 6(8), 813-824.

Mason, L., Shic, F., Falck-Ytter, T., Chakrabarti, B., Charman, T., Loth, E., ... & Jones, E. J. H. (2021). Preference for biological motion is reduced in ASD: implications for clinical trials and the search for biomarkers. Molecular Autism, 12(1), 1-13.