Dr. Kathryn Unruh, PhD is an assistant research professor at the University of Kansas Life Span Institute. Her research interests include understanding the psychological and brain processes that underlie core features of autism and developing methods for measuring behaviors that are more closely tied to their underlying biological mechanisms. She is specifically interested in using this work to improve clinical trials in autism by advancing our ability to understand why interventions (pharmacological and behavioral) show variable effectiveness across individuals and by developing new ways to predict which individuals may benefit most from certain therapeutic options. 

Today in our conversation with Kathryn we discuss the importance of understanding the brain systems that underlie autism, Kathryn’s current research in better understanding pharmacological interventions for autism, as well as how the neuroscience and behavioral fields can work better alongside each other.

Autism Research Resources:

autismspeaks.org

autismsciencefoundation.org

nlm.nih.gov (National Library of Medicine)

sparkforautism.org