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Dr. Faja studied Neuroscience at the University of Michigan before receiving her doctoral degree in Child Clinical Psychology from the University of Washington in 2009. She completed an internship at UCLA in the developmental disabilities track and postdoctoral fellowships focused on clinical neuroscience at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Washington. Her research within the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience investigates brain development and treatment response in clinical populations. In particular, she employs brain and behavioral measurement of social perception and executive control in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders. A key focus of her work is translating existing training programs in the cognitive neuroscience literature for clinical use. An additional benefit of evaluating these interventions is the opportunity to directly test the plasticity of systems that have been implicated in the neurocognitive profile of ASD. She is also currently testing whether individual differences measured during cognitive tasks are meaningfully related to the social function and symptoms of young children with ASD and health outcomes of adults on the spectrum. By answering these questions, Dr. Faja will gain information about the risk factors and developmental sequences that are critical for development of ASD, other neurodevelopmental disorders, and typical development. In order to answer these questions, Dr. Faja’s lab seeks to improve the sensitivity of measurement used to capture the skills of individuals across a wide range of functioning.

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Dr. Jeste is a behavioral child neurologist specializing in autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. She is Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at the USC Keck School of Medicine, and the Las Madrinas Chair, Chief of Neurology and Co-Director of the Neurological Institute at CHLA. After earning a BA in philosophy from Yale University in 1997 and her MD from Harvard Medical School in 2002, Dr. Jeste completed a residency in child neurology and a fellowship in behavioral child neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital. She joined UCLA in 2010. Dr. Jeste’s research is focused on developing methods to improve precision in the diagnosis and treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders. Her lab studies neurodevelopmental disorders from early infancy through late childhood. Dr. Jeste has designed innovative studies in early predictors of autism in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) that integrate biomarkers with behavior to define atypical development prior to the onset of autism. This work in TSC has led to the first randomized controlled clinical trial of behavioral intervention for these infants and has paved the way for other early intervention trials in rare genetic syndromes. Dr. Jeste’s research is directly inspired by her clinical work. To address the many gaps in medical care for rare genetic forms of neurodevelopmental disorders, she developed the Neurogenetics and Developmental Disabilities Clinic at CHLA. Dr. Jeste’s work is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Simons Foundation. She holds several national and international leadership positions including the Board of Directors of the American Brain Foundation, Board of Directors of the National Organization for Rare Disorders, the Board of Directors of the International Society for Autism Research, and she recently served as the Chair of the International Baby Siblings Research Consortium. In 2019 she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her innovations in research in early predictors and intervention for genetic neurodevelopmental disorders.

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As a clinical psychologist who directs the Yale Developmental Disabilities Clinic, James McPartland, Ph.D., spends a lot of time with patients with autism. He uses that experience as a neuroscientist to design experiments to understand how the brain works and how development of children with autism differs from typical development.

Dr. McPartland’s research is focused on understanding the way people with autism process social information by using electroencephalography (EEG) to detect electrical activity in the brain. He published the first study to show that people with autism process faces with decreased efficiency and has continued this work to examin autistic development before behavioral symptoms emerge in infants who have a higher risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

One of the challenges in conducting this type of research is to create ways of measuring brain activity in real life social situations. Dr. McPartland has worked with Yale cognitive scientist Adam Naples, Ph.D., to create realistic avatars that respond to eye contact to show that there is a specific brain marker for eye contact, a new finding. A video game in which participants are rewarded for making eye contact at the appropriate time illustrates his efforts to not just understand brain activity, but also shape behavior.

The Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials is a large scale longitudinal multi-site research study based at Yale that spans Duke University, Boston Children’s Hospital, University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles. The network will develop a battery of electrophysiological, eye tracking, and behavioral tools to measure social function and communication in people with autism.

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