DrAron Hill

My research asks how the brain maintains balanced activity, communicates across regions, and adapts over time, and how disruptions to these processes contribute to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions such as autism, depression, and schizophrenia. I am particularly interested in how the balance between neural excitation and inhibition shifts across development, and whether these shifts can be detected using scalp-recorded brain activity (EEG).

A central goal of my work is to identify brain-based markers that can support earlier, more objective diagnosis and guide personalised treatments, including non-invasive brain stimulation therapies such as TMS. I am also a strong advocate for open and reproducible science. I have led the development of open-source EEG preprocessing software and contributed as a data analyst to the EEGManyPipelines and EEGManyAnalysts collaborations, large-scale international projects working to establish transparent standards for EEG research.

Key research areas

• Excitation-inhibition balance and how it changes across development in autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions
• Brain connectivity, neural adaptability (plasticity), and their links to cognition and mental health
• Brain biomarkers for diagnosis and predicting treatment response to brain stimulation therapies

Key tools and methodologies

• High-density EEG and TMS-EEG
• Non-invasive brain stimulation (rTMS, theta-burst stimulation, tDCS, tACS)
• Advanced EEG signal analysis: connectivity, microstates, aperiodic (non-oscillatory) activity, signal complexity, and machine learning for pattern discovery