Brain Research
A specialist on the organization and functioning of the hippocampus and other parts of the primate brain, Amaral has chaired the doctoral program in neuroscience at UC Davis. Amaral has directed over a million dollars worth of research with grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which has included primate research investigations on the function of the amygdala, a brain region associated with emotion processing. Much of his research at the M.I.N.D. Institute revolves around the function of the amygdala and the hippocampal complex, and their respective roles in the pathology of autism.
Amaral investigated "Postmortem Neuroanatomical Evaluation of the Amygdaloid Complex in Autism"; his earlier studies detected alterations in the amygdala, which itself underlies the social and emotional abnormalities in autism. Amaral is attempting to evaluate his hypothesis by analyzing the atypical neural organization in individuals with autism.
Read more about this topic: David Amaral
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