Meghan Swanson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics

E-MAIL: [email protected]
Advising Statement

Research Interests:

Dr. Swanson’s program of research is focused on the neurobiology of communication for infants who develop autism. She studies how infants and their parents communicate and how this early communication supports brain development and later language skills. The overarching goal of Dr. Swanson’s work is to identify outcome and monitoring biomarkers for the next generation of autism intervention studies. She co-directs the Cognition and Neurodevelopmental Studies (CNS) Lab at the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain. She co-directs the Cognition and Neurodevelopmental Studies (CNS) Lab at the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, which receives funding from the NICHD, NIMH, NIDCD, and Aligning Research to Impact Autism.

Publications

  • Wan MW, Meera SS, Swanson MR. Emerging neurodivergence in infancy and toddlerhood. Infatn Beahv Dev. 2025;80:102133.
  • Swanson MR, Haisley LD, Dobyns WB, Schleiss MR. Beyond hearing loss: exploring neurological and neurodevelopmental sequelae in asymptomatic congenital cytomegalovirus infection. Pediatr Res. 2025 Dec;98(7):2471-2482.
  • Moraglia LE, Weigman B, Abdi H, Styner M, Kim SH, Burrows CA, Shen MD, Ravi S, Wolff JJ, Dager SR, Hazlett HC, Pandey J, Schultz RT, Girault JB, Botteron KN, Marrus N, Estes AM, St John T, Zheng G, Piven J, Swanson MR; IBIS Network. Brain morphometry in infants later diagnosed with autism is related to later language skills. Human Brain Mapping. 2025;46(7):e70221. 
  • Wu D, Moraglia LE, Ravi S, Elison JT, Wolff JJ, Estes A, John TS, Zwaigenbaum L, Marrus N, Hazlett H, Schultz R, Botteron K, Dager SR, Abdi H, Piven J, Swanson MR; IBIS Network. Clarifying the developmental association between gesture and later vocabulary for autistic children. Infant Behav Dev. 2025 June;79:102058.
  • Estrada KA, Govindaraj S, Abdi H, Moraglia LE, Wolff JJ, Meera SS, Dager SR, McKinstry RC, Styner MA, Zwaigenbaum L, Piven J, Swanson MR; IBIS Network. Language exposure during infancy is negatively associated with white matter microstructure in the arcuate fasciculus. Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2023;61:101240.
  • Swanson MR, Hazlett HC. White matter as a monitoring biomarker for neurodevelopmental disorder intervention studies. J Neurodevelop Disord. 2019;11(1):33. 
  • Swanson MR, Wolff JJ, Shen MD, Styner M, Estes A, Gerig G, McKinstry RC, Botteron KN, Piven J, Hazlett HC; Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network. Development of white matter circuitry in infants with Fragile X Syndrome. JAMA Psychiatry. 2018; 75(5), 505-513.
Meghan Swanson