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Faculty of Health Sciences

Neuroscience Graduate Program




	

		

			

				

					
Neuroscience Colloquium – Caitlin Hudac PhD
					
 Nov 21, 2024 
 3:00PM to 4:30PM

									

				

					
				

			


	

	

		

			

				

					

						

														

															

						

						
Dr. Caitlin Hudac is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina in the Department of Psychology.


Her work uses a variety of cognitive neuroscience techniques, including EEG/ERP, eye tracking, and fMRI, to better understand how the social brain changes as infants, children, adolescents, and adults learn about and interact with other people. Her current work emphasizes (1) novel approaches to better understand real-time dyadic social interactions in autistic and neurotypical adolescents and adults, (2) unique brains mechanisms in autistic, neurodiverse, and rare genetic populations, and (3) addressing disparities in rural and minority populations.


Carolina Autism and Neurodevelopment (CAN) Research Center


Brain Research Across Development (B-RAD) Lab


Talk Title:


Using EEG habituation to decode translational science from flies-to-humans for ultra-rare genetic conditions


Talk abstract: Attention is a foundational aspect of human and animal interactions and may reflect low-level cognitive processes that are atypical in neurodevelopment disorders likes autism spectrum disorder. National and international efforts to develop biological indicators (“biomarkers”) linked to attention are an important next step for clinical trials, given the need to track and establish changes that may be subtle and incremental in response to treatment. Here, Dr. Hudac describes her work to identify attention “biomarkers” that may be critical for generating targeted treatments for individuals with autism and/or intellectual disability (ID) diagnoses.  She will present her findings using electroencephalography (EEG) and a “genetics-first” approach to link human brain phenotypes to Drosophila (fruit fly) phenotypes in rare genetic subgroups associated with autism. Given the rarity of this population, Dr. Hudac will describe her success doing EEG research via a national roadtrip and her current efforts to translate her findings between human-fly.