Research: Funded Projects

Genetic disruption of gene-regulatory proteins has emerged as a major underlying cause of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders (ASD/NDD).

There has been tremendous progress in identifying the genetic basis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Dysregulated levels of neuromodulators and other chemical signals may contribute to behavioral characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Delayed or impaired motor development can detrimentally affect environmental exploration, social engagement and spatial perception.

Environmental perturbations that disrupt fetal neurodevelopment are strongly associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Large-scale genetic studies are producing valuable new leads to understand disease mechanisms and identify new treatment targets.

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit rigid patterns of behavior, manifesting as difficulty generalizing when encountering a new example of something known or something known in …

Imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory signals in the brain (i.e., E/I imbalance) has long been theorized as one of the primary pathophysiological explanations behind autism.

Genetic alterations in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) ultimately manifest at the protein level.

Increased risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) associated with gestational fever, infections, stress and other inflammatory events and innate immune responses and dysregulation suggest the need to study …

Despite commonalities in core social communication traits, young children on the autism spectrum show significant phenotypic heterogeneity and variability in response to interventions focused on improving social communication.

Personalized medicine in autism requires stratification biomarkers because of substantial biological heterogeneity.

Early identification of infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a huge challenge because neither genetic nor neuroimaging methods have revealed robust early pathological markers for …

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by heterogeneous phenotypes classically encompassing three domains — difficulties with social interactions, language communication challenges and an overrepresentation of stereotyped behaviors.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an etiologically and phenotypically heterogenous condition.

Cognitive control deficits are one of the frequent challenges accompanying autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for a myriad of higher-order brain functions, including working memory, planning, decision-making, language and creative intelligence.

In this project, Gabriela Rosenblau and colleagues aim to systematically investigate and constrain the heterogeneity of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by providing a fine-grained mechanistic characterization of …

FMRP is a multifunctional protein essential for normal brain development and neuronal plasticity.

Among the multiple cognitive processes that are atypical in people with autism, attention stands out as one of the most important.

In the current project, Paul Dudchenko provides a detailed neural and behavioral characterization of three rat models of autism spectrum disorder/intellectual disability (ASD/ID): Fmr1-/y, Grin2b …

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a chronic and heterogeneous condition with many traits and co-occurring conditions, is poorly understood.

In work that began nearly 15 years ago, Daniel Geschwind and collaborators identified a shared pattern of transcriptomic and epigenetic dysregulation in postmortem brain tissue of people with …

Gut disturbances are unusually common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the basis of these gut irregularities is not yet known.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental condition with core characteristics that are broadly categorized as problems with social engagement that are proposed, in part, to emanate …

More than 90 percent of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit sensory alterations, with 60 percent displaying altered tactile sensitivity.

The goal of this project is to investigate genes that increase risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by characterizing mutant zebrafish.

Axon pathology is at the core of disruptions in cortical connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

White matter tracts are understudied brain regions with respect to the pathophysiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has a large genetic component, but the underlying cause of ASD has not been identified in most affected individuals.

Motor impairments, from altered coordination to reduced flexibility of movements, are among the core features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The last four decades have produced an enormous catalog of human genomic variants which has the potential to revolutionize human genetics.

Capturing variation in behavioral phenotypes expressed across rodent models of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains a challenge.

Atypical sensory experiences affect around 90 percent of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Many cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are caused by reduced expression of dosage-sensitive genes.

During early postnatal development, many neocortical brain areas exhibit “sensitive periods” where circuit refinement is driven by experience, by engaging both Hebbian (correlation-based) and homeostatic forms of …

Challenges in social communication are one of the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

This project takes advantage of the rat as a model system to parse the role of striatal dopamine in social behaviors, specifically probing whether and how dysfunction in …

To advance our understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to develop novel therapeutics, it is critical to understand how genetic and cellular changes lead to changes in …

Through the sequencing efforts of the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC), Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research (SPARK) and Autism Sequencing Consortium (ASC), thousands of de novo coding mutations have …

Sleep problems occur at a higher rate in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), affecting up to 93 percent of people with ASD.

It is unknown how the COVID-19 pandemic affects pregnant women and their offspring.

Reciprocal cooperation is a hallmark of social groups and is central to successful social interaction, playing a major role in evolutionarily shaping brain functions and enabling rich social …

Altered sensory processing is a core and predictive feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) perceive and experience the world differently than neurotypical individuals.

Like many complexly inherited conditions, autism shows high heritability, yet the inventory of identified genomic variants appears to explain only a modest portion of the risk.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) results from alterations in the development of neural circuits in the brain and leads to a variety of clinical conditions, including insistence on sameness …