Stories
Synchrony & Autism
June 4, NPR — Carnegie Mellon University's Marcel Just discusses his research that provides an explanation for some of autism's mysteries — from social and communication disorders to restricted interests — and gives scientists clear targets for developing intervention and treatment therapies. Just's discovery of a lack of synchrony in the autistic brain gives scientists hope for finding a solution for autism. Read more »
Genetics and Autism: Published in "Nature," a series of studies by researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University's Kathryn Roeder and the University of Pittsburgh's Bernie Devlin, suggests that autism spectrum disorders are caused by variations in multiple unrelated locations within the genome. These findings provide a basis for future gene discovery, diagnostics and therapeutics. Read more »
Unlocking Autism's Mysteries: New research from Carnegie Mellon University's Marcel Just, recently published in the journal "Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews," provides an explanation for some of autism's mysteries — from social and communication disorders to restricted interests — and gives scientists clear targets for developing intervention and treatment therapies. Read more »
Illusion of Courage: We plan to take risks, then we "chicken out." In a new paper in the "Journal of Behavioral Decision Making," Carnegie Mellon University and University of Colorado Boulder scientists argue that this "illusion of courage" is one example of an "empathy gap" — our inability to imagine how we will behave in future emotional situations. Read more »
Coming Home: Michael Tarr practically grew up on the Carnegie Mellon University campus after his father, Joel Tarr, accepted a joint faculty position in the university’s history department in 1967. Today, the younger Tarr is conducting groundbreaking research in cognitive neuroscience using a state-of-the-art fMRI scanner on campus, and has had a hand in launching the Brain, Mind & Learning Initiative at CMU. Read more »
Teaching Gets Smarter: Kenneth Koedinger came to Carnegie Mellon University in 1986 as a Ph.D. student — exploring how software could be harnessed as a teaching tool. Twenty-five years later, more than 500,000 students a year are learning math more easily and efficiently through the cognitive tutors he and colleagues developed. Read more »
Analyzing Autism: Researchers in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University will join a five-year, $10 million initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the initiative is to create novel tools for evaluating social interactions and other behaviors that can be used in diagnosing or treating behavioral disorders such as autism. Read more »
Neuronal Diversity: Much like snowflakes, no two neurons are exactly alike. But it's not their size or shape that sets them apart, it's the way they respond to incoming stimuli. Carnegie Mellon University researchers have discovered that this diversity is critical to overall brain function and essential in how neurons process complex stimuli and code information. Read more »
The Last Frontier: Scientists know that the brain is made up of vast numbers of neurons and that these neurons communicate with each other — but how does all this neural activity give rise to human thought? It's a fundamental question that researchers are working to answer at Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC). Read more »