Lab Members:
Eric Courchesne, Ph.D.
Director
Eric Courchesne is one of the world’s leading experts on the neurobiology of autism. He is the overall Director and principle investigator of the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence, and is also the director of the UCSD Autism Center’s MRI Project on early brain development in autism. His research and the Center are dedicated to uncovering the brain bases and genetic causes of autism. Current MRI studies of autism aim to identify the brain structures that are abnormal at infancy in autism and to discover patterns of abnormal early brain growth.
Current functional brain imaging techniques (“fMRI”) are used to establish links between autistic symptoms and the brain sites responsible for them. His studies of frontal cortex microstructure seeks to identify abnormal developmental changes in microstructure and gene expression from early childhood to adulthood in autism. Recognized through publications in such journals as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medicial Association (JAMA), his work has significantly contributed to scientists’ understanding of the biological bases of autism, and has been the source of new insights on the functional role of the frontal lobes and cerebellum. He is frequently invited to lecture at major conferences and symposia and he has also made numerous media appearances, including as a featured guest on U.S., Canadian, Japanese, French and British public television science programs. His discoveries have also been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines around the world, including Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
He is a member of numerous advisory boards, including Autism- France and the Autism Society of America. Dr. Courchesne’s studies have resulted in over 170 publications. His research is supported through grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Cure Autism Now Foundation, the NICHD Developmental Brain and Tissue Bank at the University of Maryland, the Harvard Brain Bank and the Autism Tissue Program.
Karen Pierce, Ph.D.
Research Faculty, UCSD Department of Neurosciences
One of the most striking features of autism is the failure to develop or to understand complex social relationships. The overarching goal of Dr. Pierce‚s research program is to elucidate the neural underpinnings of these social deficits in patients with autism. Her studies have utilized several approaches, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and behavioral assays.
Dr. Pierce has been awarded several research grants including those from NIMH and the Organization for Autism Research. She has also received an Autism Society of America Research Award and a UCSD Chancellors Research Award in recognition of her outstanding work. Dr. Pierce serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for well-regarded journals such as Archives of General Psychiatry and Brain. Dr. Pierce has published extensively in a wide range of areas from behavioral treatment to brain dynamics in autism. Her functional imaging work was previously highlighted in Time Magazine (May, 2002).
She is an invited speaker, both nationally and internationally, as an expert on the pathogenesis of autism. Her current research interests include studies aimed at detecting autism at the earliest ages possible. Such studies will bring the field of autism research closer to finding a cure.
Cindy Carter, Ph.D.
Research Psychologist
Cindy has been the Research Psychologist at the Center for Autism Research since early 2004, and has worked with children with autism and their families for 13 years. Previous to her joining the Courchesne Laboratory, she served as the Director for Children's Hospital's Autism Intervention Center. Cindy received her master's and doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2000, where she was trained in the Koegel Autism Center under the renowned autism treatment researcher, Robert Koegel. Cindy is responsible for conducting the developmental and psychological evaluations of the individuals participating in our research and assigning diagnoses to the participants. She also is in charge of making sure our studies are in compliance with University and Hospital Human Protections Program regulations.
Joseph Buckwalter, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Jody Buckwalter has been a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Autism Research since 2005. Dr. Buckwalter received his doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Iowa, where his research focused on the neural systems of the primate medial parietal cortex. Dr. Buckwalter is a classically trained neuroanatomist with experienced histological preparation skills.
Dr. Buckwalter is responsible for coordinating all tissue-based studies at the lab. His research is primarily focused on developmental neuropathology in the autistic brain. As such, he is involved in a multitude of research projects that investigate putative neuronal number abnormalities, minicolumnopathy and gene expression patterns in the frontal lobe in autism.
John Morgan
Graduate Student
John Morgan joined the lab as a graduate student in the summer of 2004. His research is centered around elucidating the microstructural and genetic alterations present in the postmortem autistic brain. His current primary research focus is glial abnormalities, particularly confirming the existence and exploring the likely impact of early developmental neuroinflammation. He has also investigated abnormalities in neuropil volume and neuronal spacing via study of minicolumn width in the postmortem autistic brain. Prior to beginning his postmortem work, he studied developmental macrostructural alterations in the autistic amygdala using MRI. His undergraduate thesis explored stem cell transplantation as a therapy for Parkinson's disease in a number of animal models.
His research is supported through a grant from the Cure Autism Now Foundation, and acquisition of the tissue under study has been made possible by the NICHD Developmental Brain and Tissue Bank at the University of Maryland, the Harvard Brain Bank, the Autism Tissue Program, and citizens in the San Diego community.
Elizabeth Redcay
Graduate Student
Elizabeth Redcay is a graduate student in the department of psychology pursuing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. through the department of cognitive science. Her research interests center on the development of language and social processing in children with autism and in typically developing children. She has conducted a number of fMRI experiments to examine this question in typical and autistic adults, children, and toddlers. Her current focus is on the neural bases of language acquisition in infants and toddlers and the neural bases for disordered language acquisition in autism. Of particular interest is the role that social processing has on the emergence of language.
Julie Esteves, B.A.
Research Coordinator
Julie joined our lab to help coordinate a Study on Infant Development and work with pediatricians in the San Diego area. A native Puerto Rican, she speaks fluent Spanish and is familiar with both Italian and French. She graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, MA with degrees in Biology and Psychology as well as a Neuroscience concentration. While there, she was also a member of an acappella group, president and chief communications officer of the main social group for which she organized large-scale events, and she founded a care package program tailored to her peers. She served as a Research Assistant in the Psychology department, and babysat for professors and local residents alike. She recently worked at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL entertaining guests as a rollerskating hostess from the 1950s. Her love of children, exposure to several close individuals with autism, as well as her knowledge of current research on child development and social behavior have led to her interest and involvement in autism research.