Faces convey a great deal of information in our everyday lives, and the ability to interpret them successfully is essential to navigating our social world. How do these abilities come “on-line” in the first years of life? How are those abilities impacted by developmental disorders such as autism? Also, how does early exposure to biological or psychosocial adversity impact the course of brain development?

The Nelson lab is deeply interested in questions like these.  A cross-cutting theme is how experience weaves its way into the brain, leading in most cases to a pattern of typical development but in others, a pattern of atypical development.  We focus on several aspects of experience-dependent brain development, including the effects of profound deprivation or adversity on development; in others, we study children whose development has been compromised by a genetic or molecular error and who have an elevated risk of developing autism.  Through our research, including several collaborations with colleagues around the world, we aim to shed light on the many ways in which a child’s experience can shape the developing brain. We employ an assortment of functional brain imaging, including the recording of the brain’s electrical activity (EEG) and  metabolic activity (fMRI and fNIRS), and these tools are often combined with sensitive behavioral assays such as eye tracking.