Principal Investigator: Bobby Stojanoski

My research program examines the links between social and cognitive development, the underlying changes in structure and function of the brain, and the role of different demographic and lifestyle factors in neurotypical and neurodiverse children and adolescents. My lab uses different neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, EEG, fNIRS), naturalistic stimuli (e.g. movie watching, and hyperscaning) and computational approaches to examine social and cognitive abilities in the developing brain.

Sara Saljoughi Ph.D. student 

Sara is interested in the interplay between social and cognitive development. Sara uses naturalistic stimuli (i.e., movies) to identify shared and distinct neural mechanisms associated with the development of Executive functioning and Theory of Mind in children and adolescents.

Celina Lobbezoo MSc. student

Celina is identifying neural boundary states in EEG data collected while children and adolescents watched a short movie. He goal is link neural states to episodic memory to better understand how youth parse continuous experiences into meaningful events.   

Kelty MacGillivray MSc. student

Kelty is examining synchronized neural activity  (using fNIRS hyperscanning) while individuals with varying levels of autistic trait expression have a conversation about different topics. Kelty will also identify linguistic and paralinguistic features that are most strongly associated with brain-based synchrony

Gorkem Vardar Ph.D. student

Gorkem is using fNIRS to examine the neural underpinnings of emotional responses to pleasant and aversive smells, tastes, and touches. 

Lab Alumni: Graduate students 

Kathleen Lyons, Ph.D.  

Currently: Assistant Professor Brock University

Geoffrey Laforge 

Ph.D. Psychology

             Hiruthika Ravi  

MSc. Psychology