I am interested in what makes the human brain special compared to other primates. To answer this question, I study the anatomical organization of brains across humans and various primate species (e.g. chimpanzees, baboons and macaques) to reveal the ways they are similar, and different from one another. Brains are highly complex structures that can vary in many ways: they can vary in their overall or regional brain sizes, cortical folding patterns, connections, or underlying cellular organization. I employ different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques (e.g. anatomical, resting-state, diffusion-weighted MRI) to compare different aspects of brain organization across species. I believe that a multimodal approach is crucial in providing an integrative and holistic view of what sets our brains apart from other primates.

Presently, I am an NUS Overseas Postdoctoral Fellow based at the Montreal Neurological Institute (McGill University) and the University of Oxford. During this fellowship, I will compare the anatomical organisation of the medial frontal cortex across human, chimpanzee, baboon and macaque brains using a combination of MRI-based and histological methods.