Targeted Projects


The Simons Center for the Social Brain supports collaborative, focused projects undertaken by multiple laboratories to explore in depth specific aspects or types of autism. These Targeted Projects are structured to encourage collaboration among researchers in order to quickly and flexibly address pressing questions in autism research.

Current Projects

Meningeal immunity: a novel strategy for treating autism spectrum disorders

Gloria Choi
Jun Huh
Myriam Heiman
Mriganka Sur

Mitigating sensory overload with closed-loop stimulation

Earl Miller
Robert Desimone
Charles Nelson

Cognitive, neural, and computational foundations of conversation

Evelina Fedorenko
Edward Gibson
Caroline Robertson
Nancy Kanwisher
Rebecca Saxe
Roger Levy
Joshua Tenenbaum


Previous Projects

Predictive Processes in Autistic and Neuro-typical Individuals. A behavioral, neural and developmental investigation

Pawan Sinha
John Gabrieli
Jesse Snedeker

Circuit mechanisms of ASD-relevant behaviors in marmosets

Robert Desimone
Ann M. Graybiel
Mriganka Sur
Alan Jasanoff

Role of the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus in thalamocortical coordination, cognitive processing, and sleep in ASD

Matthew Wilson
Dara Manoach
Guoping Feng
Michael Halassa

The nature of the pragmatic impairment in autism spectrum disorders

Evelina Fedorenko
Rebecca Saxe
Edward Gibson
Laura Schulz
Joshua Tenenbaum

Role of the 16p11.2 CNV in autism: genetic, cognitive and synaptic/circuit analyses

Mark Daly
Nancy Kanwisher
Mark Bear
Mriganka Sur

Multi-level analysis of the Shank3 mutation in autism: translating genetic studies into pathophysiological mechanisms and therapeutic targets

Guoping Feng
J. Troy Littleton
Rudolf Jaenisch