At the RAT (rough-and-tumble) Social Behavior Lab, Dr. Ham and his research team investigate how social experiences shape the brain and behaviour across development, with a particular emphasis on rough-and-tumble play. Play provides young animals with opportunities to learn about themselves and others, form social relationships, and develop the behavioural flexibility needed to navigate an unpredictable social world. Dr. Ham examines how features of early social experience—including the amount and quality of play, partner familiarity, partner diversity, and the stability of social relationships—influence social development and later behaviour.

A second focus of Dr. Ham’s research is understanding how the brain represents social partners and relationships. His work explores how animals recognize familiar individuals, form preferences for particular partners, and update their behaviour as social relationships change. He is especially interested in how natural variation between individuals—including differences related to sex, early experience, and social competence—can reveal the processes underlying social behaviour.

Finally, Dr. Ham studies how networks of brain regions transform social information into adaptive behaviour. His research combines naturalistic observations of freely interacting animals with modern neuroscience techniques, including large-scale electrophysiology, automated behavioural tracking, and neuroanatomical analysis. By studying social behaviour as it naturally unfolds, his research seeks to build a more complete understanding of how the brain supports healthy social development and how disruptions to early experience may contribute to later social and cognitive difficulties.

VIEW GOOGLE SCHOLAR