Peter J. Marshall received his B.A and Ph.D from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.  He is a developmental psychologist whose primary research focus is the effect of early experience on brain development.  His program of research at Temple involves studying early experience processes in two different contexts. 

The first context concerns the development of neural systems for mapping perceived actions onto internal motor representations of these actions.  This research is related to the early development of the mirror neuron system (MNS) in premotor and motor cortex and how this system may be tuned by experience.  As well as being an important basic research question, there are specific implications of an improved understanding of MNS development.  Deficits in the functioning of the MNS may underlie imitative deficits in autism, and the MNS may also be involved in the typical development of emotions such as empathy which require mentalizing abilities. However, there is a striking lack of research investigating the functionality and development of the MNS in infancy and early childhood. While part of this deficit is due to the perceived lack of appropriate neuroimaging tools for use with infants and young children, Dr. Marshall’s research is showing that specific indices of motor cortex activation derived from the electroencephalogram (EEG) are valuable tools in studies of MNS function in early development.  This line of research promises to add significantly to the toolbox of developmental scientists interested in early imitative and social cognitive development, and is opening up a number of important research avenues.

The second context of Dr. Marshall’s research program examines the effect of early intervention on brain development for children who have been subject to neglect.  This aspect is manifested in my involvement in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, which is an examination of a foster care intervention for previously institutionalized children in Bucharest, Romania.  This project is part of the MacArthur Network on Early Experience and Brain Development, and has many important implications for the study and practice of early intervention, especially issues of timing of interventions in relation to early brain and behavioral development.

Dr. Marshall's website with links for classes is available at http://astro.temple.edu/~pjmarsh/teaching.htm