Mirella Dapretto, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles; Director, FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development Website | Publications
Bio: Dr. Dapretto is presently appointed as Professor in the UCLA Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at UCLA and later acquired expertise in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Her research examines the so-called ‘social brain’ in neurotypical individuals as well as in individuals with developmental disorders such as autism. Capitalizing on her dual training as a developmental psychologist and a neuroscientist, Dr. Dapretto’s research combines behavioral, neuroimaging, and genetic data to better characterize typical and atypical brain function. Grants from NIH and private autism foundations have supported her work which has been published in prestigious journals such as Archives of General Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, Brain, Nature Neuroscience, and Neuron. Over the past 5 years, Dr. Dapretto served as the PI of the imaging project of the first NIH funded UCLA Autism Center of Excellence (ACE). As part of the recently renewed UCLA ACE, Dr. Dapretto serves both as the PI of the imaging project, as well as Co-PI of the project in infants at ultra high-risk for developing autism. Dr. Dapretto is also a co-investigator on several large-scale collaborative studies headed by Drs.Bookheimer, Geschwind, Sowell, and Wang, as well as the Director of the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development.
