Developmental Medicine

The Division of Developmental Medicine sponsors a wide array of research activities through the Division's several subunits.

• In the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research (CeASAR) multidisciplinary staff are studying the epidemiology of drug and alcohol use in adolescents and young adults and testing the applicability of screening for substance use in primary care.
• The Developmental Medicine Center is examining basic hypotheses generated by clinical observations of the behavior of children with developmental disabilities, especially autism, and are creating a data base of physical and behavioral characteristics of children with autism to match against genetic arrays.
• At the Child Development Unit, a series of basic experiments are conducted on the interactions of young infants with their caregivers. Recent studies have probed the differences between boys and girls and have sought to describe the perturbations in the system that occur when the
• Through the Institute on Community Inclusion in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts, multidisciplinary research staff explore issues of transition and employment for young people with disabilities.
• Under the direction of Charles A. Nelson, Ph.D., the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children's Hospital Boston is a research unit dedicated to furthering the understanding of brain and cognitive development in typically developing infants and children, as well as children at risk for atypical development and those who suffer from autism spectrum disorders.

Featured researchers in the Division of Developmental Medicine hold faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School.

Latest Research in Developmental Medicine