The Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab is housed in the Psychology Department at Georgetown University and the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University Medical Center.

We are interested in investigating the neural basis of the development of cognitive control. Exerting “control” over cognition, in the form of maintaining information in working memory, keeping out irrelevant information from working memory, or strategic processing of information that enhances declarative memory, is important for higher cognition. Cognitive control improves during late childhood and adolescence and its impairment is at the heart of a variety of developmental disorders including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism.

Ongoing research projects in the lab:

Behavioral and fMRI studies of working memory, inhibitory control, and attention switching in healthy children and children diagnosed with ADHD

Behavioral and fMRI studies of social and non-social attention regulation in high-functioning autism

Behavioral studies of implicit learning in healthy children and children with mesial temporal lobe sclerosis

fMRI studies of strategic processes in the development of declarative memory in healthy children