Neurology & Autism
"In recent decades autism has been modeled as a brain-based, strongly genetic disorder. But a series of emerging findings and hypotheses support a broader model of the condition as genetically influenced and systemic. The heterogeneous biologies underlying autism may conceivably converge onto the autism profile via multiple mechanisms that all somehow perturb brain connectivity. Studying the interplay between the biology of intermediary mechanisms on the one hand and processing and connectivity abnormalities on the other may illuminate relevant final common pathways and contribute to focusing the search for treatment targets in this biologically and etiologically heterogeneous behavioral syndrome." — Excerpted from a subject synopsis written by Martha Herbert, M.D., Ph.D.
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Martha Herbert is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a Pediatric Neurologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at the Center for Child and Adolescent Development of Cambridge Health Alliance and a member of the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. Prior to going to medical school she obtained a PhD in the History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has received the Cure Autism Now Innovator Award and directs the Cure Autism Now Foundation's Brain Development Initiative. She is the Co-Chair of the Environmental Health Project of the Autism Society of America. Her research program includes studying what makes some autistic brains unusually large, how the parts of the brain are connected and coordinated with each other, how to incorporate metabolic biomarkers into brain research and how we can develop measures sensitive to changes in brain function that could result from treatment interventions.
