Home | Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Our research addresses a fundamental challenge in ASD: how to map complex behavioral constructs, such as social communication deficits, onto mechanistic processes in the brain. We primarily target low-level (and particularly non-social) cognitive processes, such as working memory and auditory processing, that may not be specific to the ASD diagnosis, but that can be linked to genetic, neurophysiological or neuroanatomical domains, and that impact socio-communicative behavior. The aim is to better understand the pathology of ASD by linking research at the molecular level (genetics), at the neurofunctional level (brain imaging), and at the behavioral level (symptomatology): We aim to connect complex behaviors to underlying genetic mechanisms. Click on the “projects” link for more detail on current research projects.

Congrats to Melina West!

February 25, 2020

Congrats to Melina West on winning a travel award to attend INSAR (International Society for Autism Research) in Seattle, WA in May! 🎉

[Read More]

ALTOS in the news!

February 14, 2020

Click here to read more about some of our project’s goals! https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/intelligence-behavior-shape-adulthood-for-people-with-autism/

[Read More]

Lovely article on deinstitutionalization by former student Greg Vece

February 13, 2020

https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/generalpsychiatry/84796?xid=fb_o&trw=no&fbclid=IwAR08twz-ot6afEqadUvLS7w6TbvfO4CBmauGYxUGOI_rs9aJ29y9ihSnGCc

[Read More]

Congrats to Aditi Sirsikar

November 14, 2019

She was awarded a CHARGE grant and an IBACS award for her project on depression screeners in ASD. Congratulations, Aditi!!

[Read More]

Aditi Sirsikar gives Holster Scholar presentation

September 26, 2019

Undergraduate Research Assistant, Aditi Sirsikar, gave a presentation on her independent research project on September 23, 2019 as part of the Holster Scholars Program. Way to go, Aditi!!

[Read More]

STAAR classroom featured in UConn Today

April 29, 2019

STAAR: The Unique Class in the Basement of UConn’s Sprague Hall

[Read More]

Congrats to Jason Crutcher on his new NSF fellowship!

January 29, 2019

Jason Crutcher will be funded through a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) on The Science of Learning and the Art of Communication (SLAC). Congratulations, Jason! We cannot wait to see what you do!

[Read More]

Congrats on a new grant to lab alum Prof. de Marchena

January 10, 2019

Ashley de Marchena, PhD, Assistant Professor of psychology and neuroscience, was awarded a New Investigators Research Grant from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation during the recent 2018 ASHA Convention, held November 15-17 in Boston, Massachusetts. The grant supports preliminary studies from early-career investigators. Funding will support Dr. de Marchena’s research into how children with autism make sense of the language they […]

[Read More]

DCN Lab Community Engagement and Research Recruitment – Fall 2018

December 19, 2018

Members of the DCN Lab participated in several autism awareness and research recruitment events this Fall. Below are some photos from the 2018 Autism Education and Awareness Forum and from a day of pilot data collection at the Connecticut Science Center!

[Read More]

Congrats, Yael Dai, on new RASD paper on bilingual children with ASD

August 7, 2018

Dai, Y. G., et al. (in press). Language abilities in monolingual- and bilingual-exposed children with autism or other developmental disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders.

[Read More]