Megan Kelley

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About

Megan Kelley investigates the neural and visual foundations of social interaction, with a particular focus on how we process real faces and gaze cues. Her research bridges cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology, employing innovative live interactive paradigms that combine EEG and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to capture brain activity during authentic social encounters. In her 2025 work on spatiotemporal processing of real faces, Kelley demonstrated that visual sensing variables—such as fixation duration—predict supramarginal gyrus activity, revealing how our brains dynamically track live faces. Her 2023 study extended this framework to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), examining neural processing of social gaze cueing in joint attention tasks. By using fNIRS to compare typical and ASD adults during real interactions, Kelley addresses a critical gap in understanding atypical gaze processing outside artificial lab settings. Though early in her career, her work has already garnered attention for its methodological rigor and ecological validity, offering promising insights into the neural mechanisms underlying social communication and its disruptions in neurodevelopmental conditions.