Todd Girard

Dr. Todd Girard is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD from the University of Waterloo and conducted postdoctoral research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the University of Toronto. His research focuses on medial temporal lobe functions, particularly memory and spatial cognition, with applications to clinical conditions like schizophrenia, depression, and PTSD. His Brain Imaging and Memory lab uses neuroimaging, cognitive science, and neuropsychological methods to study these topics, including the effects of recreational drug use and sleep paralysis hallucinations. Dr. Girard teaches courses on memory, psychopharmacology, brain anatomy, and fMRI techniques.

Research interests include hippocampal activation in schizophrenia, emotional memory encoding in PTSD, and the neural networks underlying spatial cognition. Recent work explores the relationship between cannabis use and psychotic-like experiences, stereotype threat’s impact on memory, and displacement-related trauma in war-affected communities. His lab also investigates how anxiety affects semantic processing and executive functioning deficits linked to substance use.

Dr. Girard’s publications span topics from fMRI analyses of cognitive tasks to neuropsychological assessments in clinical populations. Teaching responsibilities include undergraduate courses on brain-behavior relationships and graduate courses on clinical psychopharmacology. His work bridges behavioral neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, emphasizing translational research to inform theories of normal and pathological cognition.