John N. Constantino, M.D.

DEPARTMENT OF Psychiatry
Keywords: autism, child development, child abuse, violence, genetics, family studies

The Social Developmental Studies program in the Division of Child Psychiatry is focused on the causes, prevention, and treatment of social developmental disorders in children. Our work includes comprehensive studies of the genetic and neurobiological causes of autism, as well as research on inherited and environmental contributions to acquired disorders of social development, including abnormally aggressive behavior.

In our autism program, work has focused on the study of autistic social impairment as a quantitative trait, distributed and transmitted in autism-affected families across a range of severity from very mild to severe. We have developed methods for measuring these traits in large genetically-informative samples, are in the process of tracking their severity over the course of development in several hundred autism-affected children (and their siblings) in metropolitan St. Louis, and have collaborated with existing genetic registries on quantitative approaches to gene-finding. Biomaterials, behavioral assessments, and neuroimaging data acquired in our family studies are shared and pooled with samples from collaborating laboratories throughout North America to contribute to large, high-quality databases accessible to qualified scientists around the world—these include the National Database for Autism Research (NDAR), the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE), and the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC).

Dr. Constantino also serves as co-investigator and co-director of the Brown School’s Center for Violence and Injury Prevention, George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University.