Roxane Itier

Associate Professor

Head shot of Dr. Roxane Itier BSc (Grenoble, France), MSc (Paris, France), PhD (Toulouse, France)

Contact information

Canada Research Chairs website

Electroencephalogram(EEG)/ Event Related Potential Lab website

Face Processing and Social Cognition Lab website

Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Cognitive and Social Neuroscience of face perception

Recipient, Early Researcher Award (ERA) 2012

Research interests

My research pertains to the field of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. I investigate the temporal dynamics of cognitive processes involved in the perception and recognition of face identity, facial expressions of emotion, gaze discrimination and their interactions, and how these processes relate more broadly to social cognition and individual traits. I am particularly interested in the central role of eyes in these processes, at the behavioural and neural levels. This includes understanding how the information contained in the eye region influences early perceptual stages, as well as higher level face recognition and facial expression discrimination processes. I also investigate how gaze direction interacts with facial expressions to orient attention in the environment. I am also interested in how these cognitive abilities and their underlying brain networks develop over the lifespan, and what role they play in pathologies in which social cognition appears to go awry such as in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My research program integrates behavioural testing, EEG/ERP and eye tracking methodologies.

Funding

My research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Research Fund (ORF), the Canada Research Chair program (CRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI).