Haroon Popal
I am a Postdoctoral Associate in Dr. Elizabeth Redcay’s laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park. I completed my PhD with Dr. Ingrid Olson at Temple University studying the neural representation of social knowledge, and how the cerebellum interacts with regions of the default mode network to support this process. Currently, I am studying how the cerebellum is involved social learning in autistic and non-autistic adolescents.
The cerebellum is often excluded when trying to understand the neural processes underlying social cognition. However, recent work has shown that it is implicated in a variety of social tasks and psychiatric disorders with social deficits. My research aims to differentiate the cerebellum’s contribution to social cognition, from that of the more well-understood regions of the cerebrum.