Nouchine Hadjikhani

Biography

 Nouchine Hadjikhani, MD, PhD, is a visiting professor at the GNC. She is currently Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. She has been doing brain research since 1993, and has used neuroanatomy, histology, PET, fMRI, DTI, MEG as well as behavioural methods to study the normal and the diseased brain. Her primary research interest was the visual system, and she started studying this aspect of ASD inspecting the organization of visual cortex as well as face perception. Anatomical and functional studies conducted by her team have evidenced the presence of abnormalities in the so-called “mirror neuron” areas (which enable us to mimic and mentally simulate the emotions, behaviour and movement of others) of young adults with high-functioning autism. Her current work is dedicated to understand the neural bases of the deficits of social instinct in ASD, and to develop neural biomarkers that will help to objectify the effect of therapeutic approaches, both behavioural and pharmacological. Most recently, she demonstrated that affective empathy is preserved in individuals with autism. In her current research she is exploring emotional cognition in autism, together with the influence of gaze in face processing. The publications listed here on this page are related to mental health and neurodevelopment and a full list of Nouchine's publications can be found at Harvard Medical School.

Research Interest

 Psychiatry