Research
Neuroimaging of language and developmental disorders
Appointments
- Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
- Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior
- Associate Professor, Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART)
- Member, Neuroscience IDP
- Brain Research Institute
Biography
My main research interests focus on the neural representation of language and social cognition. Using neuroimaging techniques (functional MRI, and, more recently, structural MRI and event related potentials, ERP), my research seeks to
(1) delineate how brain maturation and the development of language and social cognition co-occur in the typically developing brain,
(2) qualify the patterns of brain dysfunction in developmental disorders such as autism, childhood onset schizophrenia, and dyslexia, and
(3) examine the neural basis of linguistic and communicative functions in the adult brain since studies on adults provide a normative developmental endpoint for our developmental investigations and can also address issues of brain plasticity.
Publications
- Arutiunian, V, Opdahl, M, Sullivan, CAW, Santhosh, M, Neuhaus, E, Borland, H et al.. Number of alpha peaks in the electroencephalogram is associated with clinical phenotype and copy number variation in youths with autism. Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2025; :. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2025.10.001. PubMed PMID:41101705 .
- Wagner, L, Ceballos, J, Chiem, E, Dapretto, M. Language network functional connectivity in infancy predicts developmental language trajectories. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.09.17.676930. PubMed PMID:41000961 PubMed Central PMC12458261.
- Lucchini, M, Kahn, M, Ordway, M, Bailes, LG, Dapretto, M, Thakur, S et al.. Variability of bedtime in infancy and its relationship to parent-reported and auto-videosomnography sleep metrics. Sleep Med. 2025;132 :106539. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2025.106539. PubMed PMID:40318599 .
- Aziz-Zadeh, L, Ringold, SM, Jayashankar, A, Kilroy, E, Butera, C, Jacobs, JP et al.. Relationships between brain activity, tryptophan-related gut metabolites, and autism symptomatology. Nat Commun. 2025;16 (1):3465. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-58459-1. PubMed PMID:40229237 PubMed Central PMC11997199.
- Coleman, CR, Nance, MG, Jacokes, Z, Druzgal, TJ, Arutiunian, V, Kresse, A et al.. Structural determinants of signal speed: Estimated axonal latency and its multimodal validation during face processing in autism. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.03.19.644214. PubMed PMID:40166310 PubMed Central PMC11957106.