Charles A. Nelson, PhD
Professor of Pediatrics
Research Roles/Affiliations
Director of Research, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital;
Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience, and Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Professor of Education, Harvard University;
Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research, Boston Children’s Hospital
Contact Information
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience
2 Brookline Place, Brookline, MA 02445
E-mail: charles.nelson@childrens.harvard.edu
Relevant Links
Bucharest Early Intervention Project
The Bangladesh Early Adversity Neuroimaging Project
Research
My laboratory employs a variety of behavioral and neuroimaging tools, including eye-tracking, EEG, ERP, fNIRS, sMRI, and fMRI. There are three lines of research currently ongoing in my laboratory. One line of work focuses on trajectories to autism, with a particular focus on populations at high risk for developing autism (e.g., infants with an older sibling with autism; children with various single gene mutations that appear to confer risk for developing autism). A second line focuses on the effects of early adversity on brain and behavioral development, including exposure to both psychosocial and biological adversities. The final line of study focuses on the development and neural bases of processing social information (e.g., facial emotion) and their relation to the development of internalizing disorders, particularly anxiety.
Research Interests
Developmental cognitive neuroscience
Neurodevelopmental disorders