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Our lab conducts related multi-disciplinary research programs investigating the essential characteristics of the cognitive/linguistic phenotypes that define different neurodevelopmental disorders, and the relationship between these phenotypic characteristics and brain structure and function.
Our Lab was originally located at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where Dr. Tager-Flusberg taught for over 20 years. The lab moved to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center, now part of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, in 1996, and then in 2001, it came to Boston University School of Medicine.
Our research initially focused on comparing conceptual, semantic, and grammatical knowledge in children with autism to children with mental retardation or Down syndrome using cross-sectional experimental paradigms and longitudinal studies of naturalistic language data. In the early 1990s, we began investigating the relationships between language and theory of mind in children with autism or specific language impairment (SLI), and by the mid-1990s, we expanded our program to studies of theory of mind in children with Williams syndrome.
After our move to the Shriver Center, we began a large program project exploring behavioral and brain imaging studies of language, theory of mind and other aspects of social information processing in autism or language impairment. We are continuing our studies of Williams syndrome, autism, and language impairment at Boston University School of Medicine. We have also recently expanded our brain imaging studies in collaboration with colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital.
The broad goals of our research program include:
- To define the disorders i.e. to shed light on the nature of the deficits and spared capacities that are unique and specific to particular syndromes.
- To understand the cognitive architecture of neurodevelopmental disorders in illuminating theoretical issues of normal development (e.g., dissociation between grammar and functional usage of language in autism; a componential model of theory of mind).
- To identify cognitive phenotypic markers or subtypes that will facilitate research on the underlying genetics of certain developmental disorders (especially for autism and SLI, which are both complex genetic disorders) and neuropathology of the syndromes.
- To explore the relationship between cognitive function and neurobiological substrates in these disorders, using structural and functional MRI, and other new technologies, including DTI, TMS and MEG.
- To investigate the underlying causes, developmental course, and treatment of the social and affective symptoms that define the syndrome of autism.
- To develop new measures that can be used in clinical treatment studies.
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