Many individuals with ASD experience persistent agitation or aggression, which has an enormous impact on their and their families’ quality of life. In this project, Alexander Li Cohen aims to identify a brain circuit where injury or developmental alteration is associated with agitation and aggression across age and clinical populations. This will localize a potential mechanism as well as a putative treatment target for non-invasive neuromodulation.

Motor impairments are prevalent in individuals with ASD without a known genetic syndrome (nonsyndromic ASD) and with a known genetic syndrome (syndromic ASD) and can negatively impact environmental exploration, social engagement and language development. In the current project, Rujuta Wilson aims to use quantitative measurement to develop improved methods to identify motor impairments in individuals with ASD and chromatin modifying disorders that can serve as targets for treatment and be implemented into clinical trials.

There is a considerable shortage of psychometrically sound, sensitive and objective measures of early social communication behaviors associated with autism. In the current project, Rachel Reetzke and Rebecca Landa aim to fill this gap and develop accessible mobile technology to improve the objectivity, granularity and scalability of remote automated measurement of core social communication behaviors in young children on the autism spectrum.