Carissa Cascio
- Senior Scientist, KU Life Span Institute and Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training
Contact Info
Lawrence
1000 Sunnyside Ave.
Lawrence, KS 66045
Personal Links
Biography —
Dr. Cascio completed a PhD in Neuroscience at Emory University, and then completed postdoctoral training in Neurodevelopmental Disorders research at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Dr. Cascio joined the faculty in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at Vanderbilt University in 2007, and in 2025 joined the faculty at the University of Kansas. The Cascio Lab is accepting applications for graduate students through the KU BBQ Program for fall 2026. Contact Dr. Cascio for inquiries.
Dr. Cascio’s research program is focused on the link between sensory and affective brain systems and their influence on autism characteristics, including social difficulties, co-occurring medical and psychiatric conditions, and repetitive patterns of behavior. She directs the Laboratory for Affective Sensory Research (LASR), which uses behavioral, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological techniques to understand how basic sensory and limbic neural systems contribute to the complexity of autism and related conditions. The lab is primarily focused on somatic sensory processing, including touch, interoception, pain, and proprioception. She has been PI on multiple federal (NIH) and foundation research grants focused on these topics. The LASR is committed to centering the perspectives of autistic scientists and advocates and adapting conventional laboratory protocols to include a broader range of the autism spectrum.
Research —
Current research projects:
Interoception: understanding how the brain processes sensory input from the heart, lungs, and viscera, and how this processing may differ in autism. The ultimate goal of this line of research is to develop better interventions for autism features such as emotional regulation difficulties, co-occurring sleep and gastrointestinal problems, eating, and exercise behaviors that may be impacted by interoceptive challenges.
Facial sensation and motor control: understanding how the brain uses sensory feedback from the face and neck to guide the production of directed facial expressions and other craniofacial behaviors, and how this may differ in autism. The ultimate goal of this line of research is to challenge assumptions that differences in facial expression or vocal tone reflect decreased social enjoyment or motivation, and to better understand the role of sensory processing in these common diagnostic features of autism, laying the groundwork for more effective intervention approaches.
Collaborative research projects: using a combination of infant longitudinal and high-resolution MRI data to understand the development of face-selective visual cortex and its impact on facial recognition ability and subsequent social skills development.