Mirella Dapretto

About

Mirella Dapretto is a professor-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She also serves as the Department Vice Chair in Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding the neural and genetic mechanisms underlying autism spectrum disorder and related neurodevelopmental conditions. Her work involves investigating brain activity, neural responses, and connectivity patterns in infants, children, and youth at high likelihood for developing autism, as well as exploring the relationships between brain function, gut metabolites, and autism symptomatology. Dapretto's contributions include studying atypical neural responses to language and social stimuli, the role of the cerebellum in behavioral development, and the genetic factors associated with autism. Her research also extends to examining sensory over-responsivity, early neural responses, and the biological mechanisms shared between autism and other conditions such as anxiety. She has contributed to advancing the understanding of autism through neuroimaging, genetic studies, and the investigation of brain oscillations and connectivity, with a focus on identifying biomarkers and mechanisms that can inform diagnosis and intervention strategies.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Medicine
• Developmental psychology
• Neuroscience
• Computer Science
• Audiology
• Cognitive psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Machine Learning
• Internal medicine

Selected publications

• Development of a Definition of Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection

  JAMA · 2023 · 831 citations

  Importance: SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with persistent, relapsing, or new symptoms or other health effects occurring after acute infection, termed postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), also known as long COVID. Characterizing PASC requires analysis of prospectively and uniformly collected data from diverse uninfected and infected individuals. Objective: To develop a definition of PASC using self-reported symptoms and describe PASC frequencies across cohorts, vaccination stat…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Correspondence Between Perceived Pubertal Development and Hormone Levels in 9-10 Year-Olds From the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study

  Frontiers in Endocrinology · 2021 · 123 citations

  Aim: To examine individual variability between perceived physical features and hormones of pubertal maturation in 9-10-year-old children as a function of sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: the pubertal development scale (PDS) and child salivary hormone levels (dehydroepiandrosterone and testosterone in all, and estradiol in females). Multi-level models examined the relationships among sociodemographic measures, physical features, and hormone levels. A group factor analysis (GFA) was impl…

  DOI

• Baseline brain function in the preadolescents of the ABCD Study

  Nature Neuroscience · 2021 · 120 citations

  DOI

• Graded Variation in T1w/T2w Ratio during Adolescence: Measurement, Caveats, and Implications for Development of Cortical Myelin

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2022 · 82 citations

  Myelin is a lipid membrane that is essential to healthy brain function. Myelin wraps axons to increase neural signaling speed, enabling complex neuronal functioning underlying learning and cognition. Here, we characterize the developmental timing of myelination across the cerebral cortex during adolescence using a noninvasive proxy measure, T1w/T2w mapping. Our results provide new evidence demonstrating graded variation across the cortex in the timing of T1w/T2w changes during adolescence, with…

  DOI

• Multivariate Neural Connectivity Patterns in Early Infancy Predict Later Autism Symptoms

  Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging · 2020 · 62 citations

  DOI

Recent grants

• 8/21 ABCD-USA CONSORTIUM: RESEARCH PROJECT SITE AT CHLA

  NIH · $28.7M · 2015–2027

• NIH Grant U01MH109589

  NIH · $17.1M · 2022

• Genetics and Biomarkers Core

  NIH · $60.0M · 2007–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Susan Y. Bookheimer

  Neurobehavioral Systems

  298 shared

• Leanna M. Hernandez

  University of California, Los Angeles

  95 shared

• Shulamite A. Green

  87 shared

• Sara Jane Webb

  Seattle Children's Hospital

  76 shared

• Shafali Jeste

  61 shared

• Raphael Bernier

  University of Washington

  59 shared

• Daniel H. Geschwind

  Center for Autism and Related Disorders

  55 shared

• Marco Iacoboni

  University of California, Los Angeles

  49 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  UCLA

  1994

Awards & honors

• Suzanne Eaton, Ph.D. Memorial Prize
• Taylor M. Brown Memorial Award

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• V. Reggie Edgertonh-115
• Nicholas Brechah-88
• Alan Garfinkelh-83