The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Tony J. Simon, pediatric cognitive neuroscientist with the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, a five-year, $2.6 million grant to study the syndrome associated with single most common genetic deletion in humans - chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS).

The deletion can lead to cognitive impairments and result in a broad range of disorders, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia.

"This grant will enable us to, through careful measurement, test both neurological and cognitive targets for 22q11.2 DS that will potentially lead us to the development of interventions and treatments," said Simon, associate professor-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the director of the M.I.N.D. Institute's Cognitive Analysis and Brain Imaging Laboratory.

Simon's research focuses primarily on the learning difficulties associated with 22q11.2DS. By analyzing results from cognitive-processing experiments, Simon has advanced the hypothesis that children with learning disabilities with 22q11.2 DS have problems understanding space, time and approximate quantities and numbers - what he calls 'spatiotemporal hypergranularity.'

"When the brain of one of these kids processes information about space and time, the result is poorer resolution - just as a picture taken with a two megapixel digital camera cannot represent information with the same degree of detail as a 10 megapixel camera," Simon said…