In the News

Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., recently received national news coverage for her work on affective touch and autism. The story, titled "'I will feel actual rage.’ Unusual responses to kind touches could help explain autism traits," was originally covered in Spectrum News and picked up by Science Magazine. The article discusses findings from her lab and others.

A new publication in press from the lab of Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, describes differences in interoceptive perceptual ability in individuals with autism as a function of age and cognitive ability. The article, "The development of interoceptive cognition in autism spectrum disorder and typical development," is now in press with the Journal of Cognitive Education & Psychology.

Michelle Failla, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow in Carissa Cascio's lab, was one of two postdocs selected to present her research at the Postdoctoral Association & Shared Resources Symposium in late April.  Failla used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a ‘communication independent’ tool to measure pain responses and found that individuals with ASD seem to register pain in a similar manner as individuals without ASD.

Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, was one of several co-authors whose paper was recently published in the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. The paper, "A functional neuroimaging study of fusiform response to restricted interests in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder," can be found in the April 2016 edition of the journal. View the paper on BioMed Central.

Neil Woodward, Ph.D., and Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., Assistant Professors of Psychiatry, served as co-authors on a paper titled "Brain structure in autism: a voxel-based morphometry analysis of the Autism Brain Imaging Database Exchange (ABIDE)," published in the March 2016 issue of the journal Brain Imaging Behavior.

Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and her lab members recently had one of their posters covered by Spectrum News (a press outlet associated with the Simons Foundation for Research) during the group's participation on the 2015 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Chicago recently.

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., served as first author on a paper published in Brain Topography: A Journal of Cerebral Function & Dynamics. The paper, "Somatosensory Event-Related Potentials and Association with Tactile Behavioral Responsiveness Patterns in Children with ASD," refutes a popular (but untested) theory of sensory disturbances in autism, namely that behavioral hypo-responsiveness and hyper-responsiveness are both reactions to “overwhelming” sensory input.

Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., assistant professor of Psychiatry, recently presented as part of the New York University Child Study Center Grand Rounds Lecture Series. In addition, Cascio was invited to speak as a guest on the Child Study Center's "About Our Kids" radio show on its "Doctor Radio" Sirius XM radio station. Click here to learn more about the "About Our Kids" radio show.  Click here to learn more about Dr. Cascio's research.  

A recent study conducted by Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, was named as an "article of special interest" in a review by Janet Lainhart titled "Brain imaging research in autism spectrum disorders: in search of neuropathology and health across the lifespan." The review is published in the March 2015 issue of Current Opinion in Psychiatry. Among Lainhart's sources was Cascio's paper "Affective neural response to restricted interests in autism spectrum disorders." This artic