Christopher A. Walsh

Walsh is a leading expert on the development, function, and evolution of the human cerebral cortex.  He has mapped normal brain development in experimental animals, as well as identifying key mutations causing human epilepsy, intellectual disability, and autism. He has found that some mutations can cause milder forms of autism or epilepsy because they are present in some but not all of the cells in the human brain.  Finally, he has found that some of the genes required for normal human brain development were targets of the evolutionary selection that made us human.