Sackler Institute _{for Developmental Psychobiology}

Current Research

Abilities to perceive language via auditory and visual word forms comprise a crucial element of healthy adult mental life, and are often implicated in developmental disabilities. My basic research applies cognitive neuroscience tools to help understand changes in brain function during the development of auditory and visual language perception from early childhood to adulthood within the context of typical development. This research is grounded in basic questions regarding brain plasticity, functional reorganization, and age-related changes in learning linked to 'sensitive period' effects, and employs brain imagaging methods such as fMRI task contrasts and adaptation paradigms, high-density ERP recordings, and anatomical measurements of white matter tract microstructure using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). This work is also informed by studies of atypical development in brain function and structure that characterize language-related disabilities, such as developmental dyslexia. These basic and applied research projects are combined with translational projects that attempt to leverage insights from brain imaging of typical and atypical reading development to improve reading interventions for children, as well as to study the impact of learning within such interventions on changes in functional brain activity.

Research Support(.doc)