Mirella Dapretto, Ph.D.

Dr. Mirella Dapretto is currently a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine, and a lead investigator within UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART). 

Dr. Dapretto is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Dapretto received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a specialization in Behavioral Neuroscience and then acquired extensive expertise in neuroimaging methods before joining the faculty of the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in 1999. Dr. Dapretto’s research focuses on characterizing both typical and atypical brain development. She has conducted cutting-edge work elucidating the neural correlates of core deficits in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) including the first multimodal investigations of altered developmental trajectories in ASD relating brain function and connectivity to both behavioral phenotypes and genetic risk. Her autism research has been supported by numerous awards by private foundations as well as the National Institute of Health (NIH). Since 2007, as part of the NIH-funded Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) at UCLA, Dr. Dapretto has led the imaging projects in youth with ASD as well as in infants at ultra high-risk for autism. Her current research on autism is also supported by another large-scale NIH-funded multi-site ACE Network, focused on girls with ASD, which has recently been renewed. In addition to her work on ASD, Dr. Dapretto has long been interested in neurotypical development. As funded by NIH, some of her early work focused on characterizing the neural basis of language processing, including some pioneering studies which examined developmental changes in the neural networks subserving language learning from childhood through adulthood. Dr. Dapretto has also conducted numerous studies on the neural correlates of key issues in adolescence (e.g., social exclusion, self concept development, social media influence), including some of the very first neuroimaging studies to use a longitudinal approach and to examine the link between neural responsivity to emotional stimuli and behavioral outcome (e.g., onset of depressive symptomatology, resistance to peer pressure, risk taking, and prosocial behavior). Currently, Dr. Dapretto is involved in the NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a large-scale multisite consortium on neurodevelopmental and behavioral predictors and consequences of substance abuse from late childhood through adolescence. Dr. Dapretto is also site PI on another NIH-funded multisite project – the Lifespan Human Connectome: Development (HCP-D) – which aims to characterize the development of functional brain networks and brain-behavior relationships from childhood to young adulthood, with particular emphasis on adolescence as a key developmental transition. Dr. Dapretto’s research is consistently published in high-profile journals, including top-tier neuroscience journals (e.g., Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Science Translational Medicine, Journal of Neuroscience),  psychiatry/neuroimaging journals (e.g., JAMA Psychiatry, Brain, Molecular Psychiatry, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Cerebral Cortex), and psychology/developmental journals (Psychological Science, Developmental Science, Child Development, Developmental Psychobiology). At UCLA, Dr. Dapretto is affiliated with the Center for Autism Research and Treatment, the Brian Research Institute, the UC Consortium on the Developmental Science of Adolescence, the IDDRC Center for Translational Research in Neurodevelopment, the Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, and the Training Program in Neurobehavioral Genetics, while also serving on a number of academic committees (e.g., Graduate Council). Lastly, Dr. Dapretto serves on the Editorial Board of Autism Research (the official journal of the International Society for Autism Research) and Brain and Behavior and is a standing member on the Child Psychopathology and Development Disabilities (CPDD) NIH study section.