Ken Raj Leslie, Assistant Professor

Email address: kenneth.leslie@acadiau.ca

Classes recently taught: Personality, Research Design and Analysis 1, Introductory Psychology 1 & 2, Human Neuropsychology, Neurodegenerative Diseases Seminar and Cognitive Neuroscience.

EDUCATION

B.A.Sc., University of Waterloo

B.A. (Honours), University of Waterloo

Ph.D., Brandeis University (HHMI Predoctoral Fellow)

P.D.F., Dartmouth College

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr. Leslie is interested in applying discoveries and insights from psychology and neuroscience to create value in the real world. He has worked as a consumer neuroscientist in the private sector and is an expert in using brain and body measures to understand human responses. Dr. Leslie has also used fMRI to study the human mirror neuron system and its role in unconscious mimicry and empathy. He also has experience recording from individual neurons and helped identify a novel form of synaptic plasticity called synaptic scaling (Turrigiano et al., 1998). Dr. Leslie has an abiding interest in sleep and dreaming, and has studied dream incorporation, lucid dreaming, and the role of the vestibular system in sleepiness. In 2021 Dr. Leslie founded a start-up company called MotionBed Inc. in Kentville that is developing a consumer dream directing system, called DreamDirector.AI, that will allow users to influence their own dreams.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Clark, K.R., Leslie, K.R., Garcia-Garcia, M. & Tullman, M.L. (2018) How Advertisers Can Keep Mobile Users Engaged and Reduce Video-Ad Blocking, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol 58 issue 3, pp. 311-325.

Leslie, K.R. & Bedard-Edenshaw, J. (2013) Haidawood: A media approach to Indigenous language revitalization. Langscape, 13(2): pp. 14-19.

Leslie, K.R., Johnson-Frey, S.H., & Grafton, S.T. (2004). Functional imaging of face and hand imitation: Towards a motor theory of empathy. Neuroimage, 21(2): pp. 601-7.

Leslie, K.R., Nelson, S.B., & Turrigiano, G.G. (2001). Postsynaptic depolarization scales quantal amplitudes in cortical pyramidal neurons. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(19), RC170.

Turrigiano, G.G., Leslie, K.R., Desai, N.S., Rutherford, L.C., & Nelson, S.B. (1998) Activity-dependent scaling of quantal amplitude in neocortical neurons. Nature, Vol. 391, pp. 892-896.

Hobson, J.A., Stickgold, R., Pace-Schott, E.F., & Leslie, K.R. (1998) Sleep and vestibular adaptation: Implications for function in microgravity. Journal of Vestibular Research, Vol. 8., No. 1, pp. 81-94. 

Leslie, K.R., Stickgold, R., DiZio, P., Lackner, J., Hobson, J.A. (1997) The effect of nauseogenic optokinetic stimulation on daytime sleepiness. Archives Italiennes de Biologie, 135, pp. 219-28.

Leslie, K.R., & Ogilvie, R. (1996). Vestibular dreams: The effect of rocking on dream mentation. Dreaming, 6(1), pp. 1-16.