Dr. Todd Girard

Biography

Dr. Girard’s research interests focus on functions mediated by the medial temporal lobe, including primarily memory and spatial cognition. He is particularly interested in the applications of this study area and approach to understanding functional consequences of medial-temporal abnormalities in clinical conditions including schizophrenia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Through studies with clinical samples, research in his Brain Imaging and Memory lab also aims to inform and test theories of normal cognition. In this vein, Dr. Girard moved from being primarily a behavioural neuroscientist (Graduate studies, U Waterloo) to that of a cognitive neuroscientist studying human conditions via neuropsychological, cognitive-science, and neuroimaging methods (Post-doctoral studies, Center for Addiction & Mental Health/ U Toronto). Dr. Girard and lab members have also been exploring the effects of recreational drug use on cognition, intelligence assessment, and the spatial and temporal nature of multimodal hallucinations accompanying sleep paralysis. The combination of these perspectives has made valuable contributions to current research approaches in the lab at Ryerson University. Some current research questions include:

• Are functional abnormalities in the medial-temporal lobe associated with Schizophrenia and PTSD regionally specific? 
• How are forms of memory and mnemonic processes differentially aberrant across clinical conditions (schizophrenia spectrum, depression, PTSD, recreational drug use)?
• How do emotional and self-referential thought processes contribute to memory of one’s past, future thoughts, and symptoms of psychopathology (psychosis, depression)?

Dr. Girard teaches undergraduate courses on Memory, Psychopharmacology, Brain and Behaviour, Research Methods in Psychology, and The Psychology of Thinking. He also teaches graduate-level courses in and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Anatomy of the Human Brain, and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Through these courses he aims to enhance students’ appreciation of the brain and cognition, the role that neurochemicals play in normal daily life, as well as in addiction and mental illness, from the neural level to thought and behaviour, as well as statistical and research methods in psychology.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Wilkins, L. K., Girard, T. A., Herdman, K. A., Christensen, B. K., King, J., Kiang, M., & Bohbot, V. D. (2017). Hippocampal activation and memory performance in schizophrenia depend on strategy use in a virtual maze. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 268, 1-8. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2017.07.007

Girard, T. A., Axelrod, B. N., Patel, R., & Crawford, J. R. (2015). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV dyads for estimating global intelligence. Assessment, 22, 441-448. 

Patel, R., Girard, T. A., Pukay-Martin, N., & Monson, C. (2015). Preferential recruitment of the basolateral amygdala during memory encoding of negative scenes in posttraumatic disorder. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 130, 170-176.

Paleja, M., Girard, T. A., Herdman, K. A., Christensen, B. K. (2014). Two distinct neural networks functionally connected to the human hippocampus during pattern separation tasks. Brain & Cognition, 92, 101-111.