Great Things Are Coming!

Upon completion of my postdoctoral fellowship, I will begin the Franch lab. The overarching goal of the Franch lab is to understand the neural circuits and computations implicated in Autism Spectrum Disorder.   

 

About 3% of people in the United States have autism, a form of neurodiversity characterized by differences in communication, social interaction, and repetitive behaviors. Because autism is a spectrum, each individual has unique strengths and challenges. While neurodiversity should be accepted and embraced, approximately 27% of autistic individuals have profound autism, often involving severe language impairments and high support needs that can substantially limit independence and quality of life.

To develop more effective therapies - particularly neural therapies - we first need a mechanistic understanding of the neural circuits and computations that support communication and social interaction.

 

To address this gap in knowledge, The Franch Lab will aim to discover neural computations of core behaviors underlying ASD:

1) social communication - social cognition and language 

2) repetitive and restrictive behaviors - including self injurious behaviors

​

Neural hypotheses will be grounded in two theories of autism: 1) predicting coding, which posits an altered weighting of context and prior information in ASD, and 2) social motivation theory, which posits people with ASD have reduced intrinsic reward for social cues, leading to reduced attention to social cues and downstream deficits.​​​​​​​​