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Dr. Girard’s research interests span domains clinical neuroscience, cognitive psychopathology, cognitive pharmacology, particularly memory, psychosis, fMRI, and sleep-paralysis hallucinations. His research aims to understand the functional consequences of medial-temporal abnormalities in clinical conditions such as psychosis, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to inform and test cognitive theories. Dr. Girard transitioned from a primarily behavioral neuroscientist during his graduate studies at the University of Waterloo to a cognitive neuroscientist studying human conditions using neuropsychological and cognitive-science methods during his post-doctoral studies at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto. His lab explores the relationships between recreational drug use and cognition, intelligence assessment, and the nature of multimodal hallucinations that accompany sleep paralysis. Current research questions include how individual differences in the medial-temporal lobe and brain networks relate to spatial memory performance in people with psychosis, how memory processes differ across clinical spectra, and how emotional self-referential thought processes relate to memory and symptoms of psychopathology. Dr. Girard teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in various psychology disciplines, aiming to enhance students’ understanding of brain cognition and the role of neurochemicals in normal life, addiction, mental illness, and statistical research methods in psychology.
Department of Chemical Engineering