Skip to main content
School of Medicine Homepage
Emory University Shield
  • About
    • Our Vision
    • Academic Departments
    • Our Leadership
    • Health Care Partnerships
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Location
    • Supporting Our People
    • Our Faculty
    • History
    • News
    • Events
  • Education
    • Degree Programs
    • Academic Departments
    • Residents & Fellows
    • Postdoctoral Training
    • Continuing Medical Education
    • Admissions
    • Cost and Financial Aid
    • Student Resources
  • Research
    • Research Innovation
    • Conducting Research
    • Core Facilities
    • Research Centers
    • Research Training
    • Academic Departments
    • Find a Researcher
    • Research News
  • Clinical Experience
    • Where We Work
    • Caring for a Diverse Population
    • Faculty Clinical Experience
    • Advanced Patient Care
    • Academic Departments
    • Community Learning
  • Giving
  • Directory
  • School of Medicine Home
  • Department of Pediatrics
  • Divisions
  • Marcus Autism Center
  • Social Neuroscience Lab

Social Neuroscience Lab

Marcus Autism Center
  • Leadership Team
  • Faculty
  • Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
    • Lab Members
    • Publications
    • Fellowship FAQ
  • Social Neuroscience Lab
  • Spoken Communication Lab
  • Doctoral Internship In Health Service Psychology
    • Overview
    • Introduction & Background
    • Apply
    • Interns
    • Internship Training Committee
    • Assessment Track
    • Pediatric Feeding Track
    • Treatment Track
    • Language and Learning Track
    • Severe Behavior Program Track
    • Shared Trainings
    • Publications
    • Meet the Faculty
    • FAQ
  • Research
Research in the lab is aimed at advancing three goals that are imperative for children with autism and their families. These goals are (1) to develop objective markers of risk to enable early diagnosis, (2) to chart development in children with autism to better understand the heterogeneity and pathogenesis of the condition, and (3) to use knowledge gained in research to develop practical tools for intervention.

In order to achieve these goals, our group has focused on research of highly-conserved and early-emerging mechanisms of social development. Much of our recent research has centered on measuring the way individuals with autism, from infancy to adulthood, pay attention to and interact with their surrounding environment: from attending to basic cues of biological motion, to looking at faces of other people, to observing complex social interactions.

From studies in the past and others that are ongoing, we are working to develop performance-based measures of social engagement in autism. These measures can function as diagnostic markers, predict outcome levels of social competence, and serve as endophenotypes capable of parsing the broader autism spectrum. Such measures are critical for advancing future treatments and for understanding the genetic, neural, and behavioral heterogeneity of autism spectrum disorders.

Beyond these concrete aims, the research in our lab offers insights into what a developing child with autism experiences when trying to navigate the social world by mapping what attracts the visual attention of children during naturalistic viewing of that world. The research is a first step towards studying how a child’s interaction with the world precipitates his or her understanding of that world.
Marcus Autism Center
  • Leadership Team
  • Faculty
  • Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
    • Lab Members
    • Publications
    • Fellowship FAQ
  • Social Neuroscience Lab
  • Spoken Communication Lab
  • Doctoral Internship In Health Service Psychology
    • Overview
    • Introduction & Background
    • Apply
    • Interns
    • Internship Training Committee
    • Assessment Track
    • Pediatric Feeding Track
    • Treatment Track
    • Language and Learning Track
    • Severe Behavior Program Track
    • Shared Trainings
    • Publications
    • Meet the Faculty
    • FAQ
  • Research
Emory University Homepage

Contact & Location

Emory University School of Medicine
100 Woodruff Circle
Atlanta, GA  30322 USA
  • Contact Us
  • Maps & Directions
  • Careers

Information For

  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Staff
  • Patients
  • Residents & Fellows
  • Students
Support the School of Medicine School of Medicine Intranet
facebook facebook twitter twitter linkedin linkedin instagram instagram youtube youtube
© 2018 Emory School of Medicine
  • Privacy Policy
  • Emergency Information