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Principal investigator
Runnan Cao, PhD
Principal Investigator · Assistant Professor in Radiology
Neuroimaging Labs Research Center
Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, WashU Medicine
Dr. Cao is a cognitive computational neuroscientist investigating the neural mechanisms of visual and social cognition. Her research examines how the human brain encodes faces and objects, how visual perception supports memory and higher-level social judgments, and how these processes may differ in clinical conditions. She combines human single-neuron recordings, intracranial EEG, fMRI, eye tracking, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling.
Dr. Cao earned her PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is a recipient of an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award and has been recognized by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and Washington University’s neuroscience community.
Official WashU Medicine profile WashU research profile ORCID
Lab members
Yue Wang, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Yilin Li
PhD Student
The MCN Lab brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, electrophysiology, computation, and artificial intelligence.