Stronger one-way fear signals brains of anxious kids

"Signals from the brain’s fear center make it more difficult for anxious and stressed children to regulate their emotions, a first-of-its-kind brain scanning study from Stanford shows." - Read More

Featured in Neuronline's August 2019 Research Roundup: Big Data Clarifies Emotional Circuit Development

"Several brain circuits that identify emotions are solidified early in development and include diverse regions beyond the amygdala, according to new research in children, adolescents, and young adults published in JNeurosci" - Read More

Brain response to mom’s voice differs in kids with autism

"Mom’s voice causes a strong response in the brains of typically developing children, but the response is weaker in children with autism, a Stanford study has demonstrated." - Read More

Spotlight: Stanford Psychiatry Faculty Among the Most Highly Cited in the World

"We are proud to celebrate faculty members in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences who have been included in Clarivate Analytics 2018 Highly Cited Researcher’s list – a testament to the breadth, scope and impact of their work. Through the volume of publications and papers which have drawn large numbers of citations over about the last decade, seven members of Stanford Psychiatry have been identified as providing significant influence in their areas of study." - Read More

Reward-system differences may underlie multiple autism features

Supekar, et al. (2018) in Brain

"The brain’s system for sensing pleasure and reward shows unusual activation patterns in people with autism, according to an analysis of 13 imaging studies. A second new study points to an altered structure of reward circuits in autism." - Read More: Spectrum

Key social reward circuit in the brain impaired in kids with autism

Supekar, et al. (2018) in Brain

"Deficits in the brain’s reward circuit are linked to social deficits in children with autism and may point the way toward better treatments, according to a new Stanford study." - Read More: Stanford Medicine News Center

Researchers uncover hidden brain states that regulate performance and decision making

Taghia, et al. (2018) in Nature Communications

"This study is an example of the importance of computational models in driving research and facilitating our understanding of the human brain...The team developed a computational model to make fundamental findings that have never before been revealed about how our brain processes information at various levels during daily decision making." - Read More: NIH

Finding solutions for people with autism and their families

"More than 1 in 68 children are living with some form of autism, and each diagnosis has a ripple effect on families, schools and medical professionals who support those individuals. Stanford experts have been part of the teams not only diagnosing and treating the condition, but also trying to understand its causes and helping people with autism and their families live full lives." - Read More: Stanford News

Positive attitude toward math predicts math achievement in kids

Chen, et al. (2018) in Psychological Science

"In a study of elementary school students, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that having a positive attitude about math was connected to better function of the hippocampus, an important memory center in the brain, during performance of arithmetic problems." - Read More: Stanford Press Release

NeuroImage Editors' Choice Award - June 2017

Congratulations Ryali, et al. for winning the NeuroImage Editors' Choice Award of 2017.  

Read the full article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=26934644 

Mom's voice activates many different regions in children's brains

Abrams, et al. (2016) in PNAS

"A far wider swath of brain areas is activated when children hear their mothers than when they hear other voices, and this brain response predicts a child’s social communication ability." - Stanford Press Release

European Journal of Neuroscience Virtual Issue: Multisensory Processing

Chen et al. (2016) are featured in a special virtual issue about multisensory processing of the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Brain scans better forecast math learning in kids than do skill tests, study finds

Evans et al. (2015) in Journal of Neuroscience

"Gray matter volume and connections between several brain regions better forecast 8-year-olds’ acquisition of math skills than their performance on standard math tests." - Stanford Press Release

• Other Media Coverage (Selected)
  Boston Globe: This is your brain on math
  NBC News: Brain scans may predict math gains in children
  Stanford Medicine: Number Sense

Landscape of brain ridges may vary with gender in autism

"A region of the brain involved in interpreting social cues is unusually smooth in boys and men with autism, but normal in girls and women with the disorder. The findings, published 4 July in Molecular Autism, add to mounting evidence that autism manifests differently in boys than in girls." - Simons Foundation Press Release

Schaer, et al. (2015) in Molecular Autism

Tutoring relieves math anxiety, changes fear cirtcuits in children

"Individualized math lessons improved kids’ arithmetic performance and made them feel more comfortable with the subject." - Stanford Press Release

Supekar, et al. (2015) in Journal of Neuroscience

Media Coverage (Selected)
NPR: 1 Tutor + 1 Student = Better Math Scores, Less Fear

Girls and boys with autism differ in behaviors, brain structure

"A study of about 800 children with autism found gender differences in a core feature of the disorder, as well as in the youngsters’ brain structures." - Stanford Press Release

Supekar and Menon (2016) in Molecular Autism