Nancy Rankin Williams McGugin, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor of Psychology
VKC Member
Overview of Interests
Dr. McGugin is interested in the intersection between brain and behavior, studying the functional and structural neural correlates of learning and memory. Specifically, her research explores individual differences in behavior to better understand brain differences. In collaboration with Dr. Carissa Cascio, she is investigating the time course of visual perceptual deficits inherent in autism (i.e., face recognition impairment related to eye gaze behavioral aversion). Their goal is to better understand differences between the autistic brain and that of normal development, by understanding when particular skills are learned in autism, relative to when and how and where these skills become represented in the brain. Working alongside Drs. Isabel Gauthier and Allen Newton, Dr. McGugin has developed novel techniques for non-invasive ultra-high resolution neuroimaging that allows them to probe cortical layers in a sequence that have shown to be tolerated and highly reliable in autism.