Event Recordings


 Simons Center Colloquium and Lunch Series​

Sex, gender, and autism: From clinical to basic sciences

Meng-Chuan Lai, M.D., Ph.D. Staff Psychiatrist and Clinician Scientist, Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Canada); Associate Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, and Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto (Canada)

Date: 09/14/2022

The Marmoset Brain Mapping and Marmoset Brain Connectome Projects: Understanding the Anatomical and Functional Organization of the Primate Brain

Afonso C. Silva, Ph.D., Endowed Chair Professor of Translational Neuroimaging, Neurobiology, Department of Neurobiology, Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute

Date: 02/16/2022

Probing the cortical circuits that prevent sensory overload 

Alex Major, Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, Earl Miller Laboratory, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, MIT

Date: 02/11/2022

Understanding functional connectivity in the mammalian brain

Alan Jasanoff, Ph.D., Professor, Biological Engineering, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Nuclear Science and Engineering; Associate Investigator, McGovern Institute; Director, Center for Neurobiological Engineering

Date: 11/19/2021

Minding our P’s and Q’s: Questions in human genetics about a CNV region and brain-based traits

Lauren Weiss, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco

Date: 11/10/2021

Enhanced Rationality in Autism Spectrum Disorder

John Gabrieli, Ph.D., Grover Hermann Professor, Health Sciences and Technology; Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Investigator, McGovern Institute; Director, Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center; Director, MIT Integrated Learning Initiative; Core Faculty, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science

Date: 10/15/2021

Timing matters: Genes, brains, and cognition in Williams syndrome

Barbara Landau, Ph.D., Dick and Lydia Todd Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University

Date: 10/06/2021

Loopholes, a Window into Value Alignment and the Learning of Meaning

Sophie Bridgers, Ph.D., Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT BCS Early Childhood Cognition Lab (PI: Laura Schulz) and Harvard Computation, Cognition, and Development Lab (PI: Tomer Ullman)

Date: 09/24/2021

The role of social cognition in … social cognition

Joshua Hartshorne, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Boston College

Date: 09/17/2021

Prediction in Autism

Pawan Sinha, Ph.D., Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 04/23/2021

 

Mapping Emotions: Discovering structure in mesoscale electrical brain recordings

Kafui Dzirasa, M.D., Ph.D., K. Ranga Rama Krishnan Endowed Associate Professor, Duke University Medical Center

Date: 04/17/2021

Modeling Neurodevelopmental Disorders Using Human iPSC-derived Brain Organoids

Xuyu Qian, Ph.D., Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, Christopher Walsh Laboratory, Harvard University

Date: 03/26/2021

 

Base Editing and Prime Editing: Genome Editing Without Double-Strand Breaks

David Liu, Ph.D., Richard Merkin Professor and Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare; Core Institute Member and Vice-Chair of the Faculty, Broad Institute; Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences, and Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Harvard University; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Date: 03/17/2021

 

Early emergence and later development of face, scene, and object regions revealed by natural vision

Frederik Kamps, Ph.D., Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, Rebecca Saxe Laboratory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 02/26/2021

Context dependence in social decision-making

Mina Cikara, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard University

Date: 02/17/2021

Socially Assistive Robotics as a Path to Accessible Personalized ASD Therapy Support

Maja J. Matarić, Ph.D., Chan Soon-Shiong Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics; Interim Vice President of Research; Founding Director, USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center; Director, USC Robotics Research Lab, University of Southern California

Date: 12/9/2020

One brain, many genomes: somatic mutation and genomic diversity in human brain

Christopher A. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of Genetics and Genomics, Boston Children’s Hospital, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, Harvard Medical School

Date: 11/18/2020

Representation of spatial hypotheses in mouse retrosplenial cortex

Jakob Voigts, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Mark Harnett Laboratory, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 11/13/2020

The computational psychiatry of autism: perception, prediction and learning

Rebecca Lawson, Ph.D., Lecturer, Principal Investigator, University of Cambridge, UK

Date: 11/04/2020

The Burden of Wake and the Reasons for Sleep

Chiara Cirelli, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Date: 10/14/2020

Exploring Enhanced Rationality in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Liron Rozenkrantz, Ph.D., Simons Fellow, John Gabrieli Laboratory, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 10/09/2020

The integration of parvelbumin and somatostatin interneurons into cortical networks: both nature and nurture

Gordon Fishell, Ph.D., Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School; Broad Institute Member, the Stanley Center at the Broad

Date: 09/30/2020

Exploring Temporal Expectation in Marmosets

Hiroki Sugihara, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Mriganka Sur Laboratory, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 09/25/2020
* Lunch Series talk

 Interneuron dysfunction in the fragile X mouse model of autism

Carlos Portera-Cailliau, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Neurology & Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

Date: 09/16/2020

A quantitative description of natural and induced marmoset behavior

William Menegas, Ph.D., Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, Guoping Feng Laboratory, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 05/08/2020
* Lunch Series talk

Modeling ASD genetics in C. elegans

Paul Sternberg, Ph.D., Bren Professor of Biology, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology

Date: 04/29/2020

Shank3 protein: roles in synaptic plasticity and in autism spectrum disorder

Menglong Zeng, Ph.D., Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Date: 04/03/2020
* Lunch Series talk

Sodium channel dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders

Kevin Bender, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco

Date: 02/26/2020

Sensitive periods in human development: A case study of early psychosocial deprivation

Charles Nelson, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Boston Children’s Hospital; Director of Research, Developmental Medicine Center

Date: 02/12/2020

Understanding the neural basis of social attachment

Devanand Manoli, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Weill Institute for Neuroscience, Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco

Date: 11/13/2019

Advances in Early Detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Sally Ozonoff, Ph.D., Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair for Research, University of California Davis

Date: 10/09/2019

Cooperative breeding and the evolution of human hypersociality – Insights from marmosets

Judith Burkart, Ph.D., University of Zurich, Department of Anthropology

Date: 10/02/2019

Autism From Generation to Generation

Alison Singer, President, Autism Science Foundation

Date: 09/18/2019

Arc as a master regulator of neuronal plasticity: signaling protein or retroviral-like capsid

Clive R. Bramham, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Head of Neuroscience, Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen, Norway

Date: 04/22/2019

 

Look me in the eyes – or not?

Nouchine Hadjikhani, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Date: 04/17/2019

Early Language Acquisition and the Social Brain: An Inflection Point for the Brain’s Human Language Network

Patricia K. Kuhl, Ph.D., Professor and Co-Director, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and Department of Speech and hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle Washington.

Date: 03/13/2019

A show and tell about  (sound bite): Autism, Interdependence and Reciprocity

Presenters:
Nathalie van Bockstaele | Concept designer and performer
Jason O’Keefe, Elise L’Herault, Michael Jauquet, Artist performers
Noa Alon | Technical Visualizer and performer
Pablo Friedmann | Fellow artist, mentor, partner and performer
Jocelyn Odóna Holm, Jackie Lee | Discussants and performers 

Date: 12/05/2018

Loss of axonal function in maternal immune activation models of autism spectrum disorders

John Huguenard, Ph.D., Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Neurosurgery, and Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Stanford University School of Medicine.

Date: 10/10/2018

Integrative Epigenomic Analyses Support the Early Developmental Origin of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Alika Maunakea, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Epigenomics Research Program, Department of Native Hawaiian Health, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawai’i, Mānoa.

Date: 09/26/2018

Social Transmission of Stress

Jaideep Bains, Ph.D., Professor, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary.

Date: 09/12/2018

 

Transcriptional and Epigenetic Mechanisms of Depression

Eric J. Nestler, M.D., Ph.D., Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience; Director, Friedman Brain Institute; Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Date: 05/16/2018

Microglia and synapses: partners in experience-dependent plasticity

Ania Majewska, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester.

Date: 04/18/2018

The Neurobiology of Helping: Lessons from Order Rodentia

Peggy Mason, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago.

Date: 03/28/2018

Development of Targeted Therapeutics for Autism Spectrum Disorders

Randall L. Carpenter, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Rett Syndrome Research Trust; Research Affiliate, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Date: 03/21/2018

From compost to the clinic: using C. elegans to study psychiatric disorders

Joshua Kaplan, Ph.D.,Professor of Neurobiology, MGH/Harvard Medical School.

Date: 02/21/2018

How instructions, expectations, and conditioning modulate pain and aversive learning

Lauren Atlas, Ph.D., Clinical Investigator / Section Chief, National Institutes of Health (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institutes on Drug Abuse).

Date: 01/24/2018

Exploring Language Phenotypes in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Helen Tager-Flusberg, Ph.D., Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University.

Date: 11/08/17

 

Visual attention as a window into understanding brain development in autism and fragile X syndrome

Susan M. Rivera, Ph.D., Professor, University of California, Davis. Department of Psychology and the MIND Institute.

Date: 10/25/2017

 

Tackling the genetic and synaptic heterogeneity in autism from risk to resilience

Thomas Bourgeron, Ph.D., Professor, University Paris Diderot / Institut Pasteur.

Date: 09/27/2017

Our Dynamic Microbiomes and the Brain

Rob Knight, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Department of Computer Science, Director for the Center for Microbiome Innovation, University of California, San Diego.

Date: 09/13/2017

Autism in Tuberous Sclerosis: From Circuits to Treatments

Mustafa Sahin, M.D., Ph.D., Rosamund Stone Zander Chair; Director, Translational Neuroscience Center at Boston Children’s Hospital; Professor of Neurology Harvard Medical School.

Date: 05/10/2017

Out with the old and in with the new – the role of circular RNAs in psychiatric disorders

Nikolaos Mellios, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Neurosciences, University of New Mexico.

Date: 04/26/2017

 

Changes in inhibitory/excitatory connectivity and neural network dynamics in a model of autism

Peyman Golshani, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA.

Date: 04/12/2017

Imaging Infant Brain Development in Autism

Joseph Piven, M.D., Thomas E. Castelloe Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina.

Date: 3/22/2017

Toward an Inflammation-Related Subtype of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Christopher J. McDougle, M.D., Director, Lurie Center for Autism; Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, MGH and MassGeneral Hospital for Children; Nancy Lurie Marks Professor in the Field of Autism, Harvard Medical School.

Date: 2/8/2017

Genetic influences on ASD across the frequency spectrum

Ben Neale, Ph.D., Assistant in Genetics, Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School; Associate Member, Stanley Center for Psychiatric Disease, Broad Institute.

Date: 11/18/2015

Towards a Transformative, Translational Developmental Neuroscience of Autisms

Kevin Pelphrey, Ph.D., Harris Professor in the Child Study Center and Professor of Psychology, Yale University.

Date: 11/4/2015

Altered Astrocyte Function in a Murine Model of Rett Syndrome

Michelle Olsen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology.

Date: 4/15/2015

Diverse Brains

Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Ph.D., Vilas Professor and Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Date: 3/04/2015

Synaptic alterations in murine models of Rett syndrome

Tommaso Pizzorusso, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurophysiology, University of Florence and CNR Institute of Neuroscience.

Date: 2/18/2015

understandingbrainfunction

Understanding Brain Function: Insights from Genetic and Epigenetic Analysis of CNS Cell Types

Nathaniel Heintz, Ph.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, James and Marilyn Simons Professor, Head-Laboratory of Molecular Biology, The Rockefeller University.

Date: 2/04/2015

 McPartland_thumb

The Clinical Neuroscience of Social Brain Development in ASD

James McPartland, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, Director, Yale Developmental Disabilities Clinic, Yale Child Study Center.

Date: 1/15/2015

genomicsofneurodevelopmental

Genomics of Neurodevelopmental Diseases

Guy Rouleau, M.D., Ph.D., FRCPC, OQ, Director, Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital.

Date: 12/3/2014

developingtargetedinter

Developing targeted interventions for autism spectrum disorders

Susan Faja, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist, Boston Children’s Hospital.

Date: 11/5/2014

reliabilityofsensory

Reliability of Sensory-Evoked Activity in Autism

David Heeger, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, New York University.

Date: 10/22/2014

 stormingtheivory

Storming the Ivory Tower: Why autism interventions don’t work as they should in the community and what to do about it

David Mandell, Sc.D., Director, Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research; Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

Date: 9/10/2014

 probiotictherapy

A probiotic therapy for Autism Spectrum Disorders?

Sarkis Mazmanian, Ph.D., Professor of Biology and Biological Sciences, California Institute of Technology.

Date: 6/4/2014

cognitiveneuro

A Cognitive Neuroscience approach to the early identification of autism

Charles Nelson, M.D., Research Director, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital.

Date: 3/19/2014

 mappingthesub

Mapping the substructures of common affinities for ASD population to create tools for intellectual and emotional growth

Ron Suskind, Senior Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

Date: 3/12/2014

restingstateelectro

Resting state and event related electroencephalography as biomarkers of learning and cognitive ability in young children with ASD: Can we parse the heterogeneity?

Shafali Spurling Jeste, M.D. Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Neurology Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior Director, Electrophysiology Core UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment, UCLA.

Date: 12/23/2013

Simons Center Lunch Series

Using simultaneous EEG-fMRI to characterize human face processing in space and time

Elizabeth Norton, Ph.D., 6/12/2015

Kjelgaard_thumb  Autism as a disorder of prediction: Empirical support for a new hypothesis
Margaret Kjelgaard, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, 5/1/2015
fiberbased Fiber-based probes for long term interrogation of neural circuits

Ulrich Froriep, Ph.D., 1/23/2015

Sung-Yon Kim Functional circuit mapping of the anxious state: from optogenetics to CLARITY and eTANGO
Sung-Yon Kim, Ph.D., 9/19/2014
socialnetwork Social network software to assist people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Henry Lieberman, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist, MIT Media Laboratory
6/27/2014

Special Events

Special Seminars

video-icon-30px Helping Different Kinds of Minds Succeed, Temple Grandin, Ph.D., March 16, 2015

pic-icon-30px Inaugural Event, April 11, 2012

Poster Sessions

pic-icon-30px 2014 Summer UROP Poster Session, August 8, 2014

pic-icon-30px 2013 SCSB Poster Session and Luncheon, November 22, 2013

pic-icon-30px 2013 Summer UROP Poster Session, August 9, 2013

pic-icon-30px 2012 SCSB Poster Session and Luncheon, October 26, 2012

pic-icon-30px 2012 Summer UROP Poster Session and Luncheon, August 3, 2012

Simons Center Workshops

2014

 2014opening The Social Brain: New Opportunities for Discovery and Technological Development

Workshop opening remarks, overview of the Simons Center

 2014pres2 Simons Center Annual Workshop 2014: Autism Spectrum Disorder: Across The Spectrum

Sarah Spence, M.D., 9/5/2014

 2014phenotype Phenotype First?

Isaac S. Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., 9/5/2014

 2014multimodal Using Multimodal Human Neuroimaging to Understand The Social Brain

Elizabeth Norton, Ph.D., 9/5/2014

 2014discussion The Social Brain: New Opportunities for Discovery and Technological Development

Workshop open discussion, 9/5/2014

2013

evelina The neural architecture of language and executive functions in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Evelina Fedorenko, Ph.D., 9/4/2013

toolsfor Tools for scalable 3-D brain activity mapping in autism models

Jorg Scholvin, PhD, Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, Synthetic Neurobiology Group, MIT, 9/4/2013

autismvision Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Vision of Where We can Go Together

Leonard Rappaport, M.D., M.S. – Chief, Division of Developmental Medicine Boston Children’s Hospital, Mary Deming Scott Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, 9/4/2013

productsofhealthcare How Do We Study ALL Autisms Using the By-Products of Healthcare Delivery?

Isaac Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., 9/4/2013

paneldiscussion Panel Discussion: Technologies for Understanding the Brain

Alan Jasanoff, Ph.D. – Department of Biological Engineering, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, & Center for Neurobiological Engineering, MIT Guoping Feng, Ph.D. – Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences & McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT Edward Boyden, Ph.D. – Synthetic Neurobiology Group, Media Lab, Center for Neurobiological Engineering, Departments of Biological Engineering & Brain and Cognitive Science, MIT, 9/4/2013

2012

simonsinaugural Simons Center Inaugural Workshop

Multiple speakers, February 24, 2012