Principal Investigator

Dr. Natasha Marrus is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor at the Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine. Her clinical practice is centered on early childhood evaluations for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as school consultations for students with ASD and associated psychiatric conditions. Her developmental neuroscience research aims to identify early causal mechanisms of ASD. Her work focuses on three main goals: 1) measuring phenotypes of ASD as related to social motivation, 2) tracking the development of neurocircuitry which underlies social, language, and motor function through neuroimaging, and 3) designing experimental paradigms to assess ASD risk. By advancing these behavioral neuroscience lines of research, Dr. Marrus hopes to improve early risk assessment and identification of ASD while also elucidating mechanisms that will advance individualized treatment strategies.

Her most recent publication is titled “Genetic Counseling as Preventive Intervention: Toward Individual Specification of Transgenerational Autism Risk.”