Rebecca Schwarzlose
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Neuroscience·Early-career
For some children, everyday sights, sounds and textures feel overwhelming. Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) means strong negative reactions to, and avoidance of, harmless sensory input.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
sensory over-responsivity
sensory processing
autism spectrum disorder
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether neural suppression, the reduced brain response to expected sensations, is weaker in children with sensory over-responsivity, using existing brain imaging data.
- Develop and pilot a functional MRI task that measures the brain's surprise response to unexpected sensory input in children.
- Test whether adaptation, suppression and surprise responses are attenuated in sensory and fronto-limbic brain areas of children with SOR, both with and without autism, compared with typically developing children.
- Apply multilevel statistical models to complex fMRI datasets to localize disruptions in sensory prediction mechanisms to specific brain regions.
More about the research
It affects about one in five school-age children and about two-thirds of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and some other neurodevelopmental conditions. SOR brings fear, anxiety, poor sleep and nutrition, social isolation, a higher risk of mental illness, and strain on families. Yet its causes are poorly understood and current treatments have had limited success. This project borrows ideas from basic sensory neuroscience to ask whether SOR arises because the brain fails to predict incoming sensations.
Why it matters
Children with SOR, including many autistic children, live with anxiety, distress and social difficulties, and current treatments help only partly. Identifying which prediction mechanisms are disrupted, and in which brain areas, could point to specific targets for new interventions. Those interventions could then be tested in future clinical studies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kathleen Gunthert
American University, DC·Neuroscience
Test whether excitatory or inhibitory non-invasive neuromodulation of right cerebellar lobule VII (RVII) selectively changes social learning, comparing it with sham stimulation in neurotypical adults and adults with autism.
Anna Wallisch
University of Kansas, KS·Psychology·Early-career
Examine physiological synchrony, how closely parent and child body arousal track each other, using wearable biosensors during home mealtimes for children with autism and typically developing children.
Athanasios Tzempelikos
Purdue University, IN·Engineering
Measure how changing daylight relates to behavior in 50 children with autism spectrum disorder in real classrooms, using a sensor network that maps luminance (perceived brightness) pixel by pixel alongside assessments of seven behavioral aspects and sensory profiles.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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