Tamara Vanderwal

My lab uses naturalistic conditions (particularly movies) to study neural and behavioural responses, with a focus on child psychiatric disorders. Our research has two main emphases. First, from a methods perspective, we are interested in testing new ways to leverage the variability and duration of signals collected under naturalistic conditions. Additionally, we are working on ways to improve scientific control during naturalistic viewing that do not violate the dynamics of the stimuli themselves. Second, we are interested in using complex conditions to identify clinically relevant brain differences in different disorders that apply at the individual subject level. We make and test professionally produced movie paradigms for use in neuroscience (e.g., our Inscapes paradigm is now used in labs around the world), and we are currently working on a movie designed to evoke symptoms in childhood-onset OCD.