Nathan Caruana

I completed my Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) in 2011 at Macquarie University working with Dr Jon Brock. For my honours project, I used eye-tracking to investigate the ability to integrate context during reading. Specifically, I was interested in the relationship between this ability and subclinical autistic traits.

I commenced my PhD in 2012 under the supervision of A/Prof Genevieve McArthur, Dr Jon Brock, and Dr Alexandra Woolgar.

During my PhD, I developed new virtual reality paradigms to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of joint attention and social interaction in typical development and in adults diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). In my research, I use a range of techniques, including, eye tracking, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). 

I completed my PhD in 2015 and began a 2-year joint postdoctoral fellowship with the Perception in Action Research Centre and the ARC Centre for Cognition and its Disorders at Macquarie, where I worked on a number of eye-tracking and fMRI projects investigating the neural mechanisms of gaze processing and gaze-based communication in adults with schizophrenia and typical development.

Aside from my research in social cognition and neuroscience, I am also involved in a number of literacy research projects investigating reading and spelling in adults and adolescents.