Rate My Professor Jason Lerch

Lerch's research centers on neuroimaging in rodents, particularly neurodevelopment and genetics, to parse autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions, understand how sex and gender shape the brain leading to disparities in mental health, and elucidate the mechanisms of MRI-detectable brain plasticity. His lab improves MRI acquisition, processing, and analysis methods by integrating mechanistic experiments in mouse models with human studies. Key publications include 'Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation' (Shaw et al., 2007, PNAS), 'Neurodevelopmental trajectories of the human cerebral cortex' (Shaw et al., 2008, Journal of Neuroscience), 'Intellectual ability and cortical development in children and adolescents' (Shaw et al., 2006, Nature), 'Studying neuroanatomy using MRI' (Lerch et al., 2017, Nature Neuroscience), 'Clustering autism: using neuroanatomical differences in 26 mouse models to gain insight into the heterogeneity' (Ellegood et al., 2015, Molecular Psychiatry), and 'Whole-brain comparison of rodent and human brains using spatial transcriptomics' (Beauchamp et al., 2022, eLife). His highly cited works have significantly influenced the fields of neuroanatomy, developmental neuroscience, and neuroimaging methods for studying brain changes in health and disease.