Benjamin Deen

Benjamin Deen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Tulane University's School of Science & Engineering. His laboratory studies social perception and cognition using fMRI and behavioral methods, with a focus on face processing, theory of mind, and infant brain development.

Education includes: Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016) and B.S. in Physics and Cognitive Science from Yale University (2009).

Research interests center on cognitive neuroscience approaches to social understanding, including specialized brain networks for social perception, infant neurodevelopment, and person knowledge representation. Methodological expertise includes precision fMRI and infant neuroimaging techniques.

Themes in publications demonstrate consistent focus on social cognition neural mechanisms, with recent work expanding to comparative primatology and network neuroscience. Recent articles show increased attention to developmental trajectories and multisensory integration.

• Human Brain Mapping Editor’s Choice Award 2020
• Leon Levy Fellowship 2020–2022
• Kavli Neural Systems Institute Pilot Grant 2019
• Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship 2017–2020

Currently advises 5 PhD students, 3 master's students, and 14 undergraduate researchers. Manages multiple active grants from Louisiana Board of Regents and Tulane funding sources.

Directs the Social Memory Lab, which employs specialized fMRI methods for studying social cognition across development.