Below are quick descriptions of my primary projects. As you can see, I love a good acronym!

HEBB: Human Early Brain-Behavior

How does attention to the eyes of others contribute to the maturation of major white matter tracts in the infant brain? As the eponymous Donald Hebb coined, “Cells that fire together, wire together.” The first 6 months mark the window of greatest postnatal brain growth and experience-dependent plasticity, with the rate of neurogenesis slowing just as synaptogenesis picks up. In this study we are using longitudinal eye-tracking and diffusion tensor imaging, collected from the same infants, to explore the reciprocal and iterative relationship between early social experience and brain development.

Collaborators: Dr. Xiongtao Dai

CIDD: Caregiver-Infant Dyad Dynamics

What do infants and caregivers do during social interactions from birth to six months, and how are their behaviors temporally and contextually dependent on those of their social partner? What can that information tell us about the progression of autism spectrum disorder? To answer these questions, I am leveraging advances in computer vision and machine learning for dynamic behavior prediction to measure, in a data-driven approach, what infants and caregivers do during dyadic social interactions and how their behaviors influence each other.

Collaborators: Dr. Gordon Berman

Representative papers:

A. Ford, H. Walum, B. Brice, H. Patel, S. Kunnikuru, W. Jones, G. Berman, S. Shultz. Caregiver greeting to infants under 6 months already reflects emerging differences in those later diagnosed with autism. Proc. R. Soc. B ;291: 20232494. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2494

MEBB: Macaque Early Brain-Behavior

How does attention to the eyes of others contribute to the development of functional brain networks in non-human primate models of social development? This study parallels the HEBB analysis with a cohort of infant rhesus macaques. Macaques are a remarkable animal model of early development because they live in dynamic social communities.

Collaborators: Dr. Mar Sanchez, Dr. Zsofia Kovacs-Balint, and Dr. Jocelyne Bachevalier

Representative papers:

A. Ford, Z. A. Kovacs-Balint, A. Wang, E. Feczko, E. Earl, O. Miranda-Dominguez, L. Li, M. Styner, D. Fair, W. Jones, J. Bachevalier, M. Sanchez. (2023). Functional maturation in visual pathways predicts attention to the eyes in infant rhesus macaques: effects of social status. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 60. PMID 36774827.