Introducing Carissa Cascio, director of the LASR Lab at KCART

Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., focuses on the link between the brain and the body in autism. 

At KU, she directs the Laboratory for Affective Sensory Research (LASR), which uses neuroscience to understand how the brain receives and interprets signals from the body, including the skin surface and internal organs such as the heart and stomach. By studying this in individuals on the autism spectrum, she and her colleagues hope to understand how sensory sensitivities, emotional regulation difficulties, and co-occurring conditions such as GI distress happen, and how they can be better treated. She 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.

Cascio’s background and training includes a doctorate in neuroscience at Emory University and postdoctoral training in neurodevelopmental disorders research at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. In 2007, she joined the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Program in the Department of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She was on the faculty at Vanderbilt from 2007-2024, achieving tenure in 2017 and was awarded the James G. Blakemore Chair in Psychiatry in 2022. In 2025, she joined the faculty at the University of Kansas as a professor of psychology and senior scientist at the Life Span Institute.

Proud to be a brand new Jayhawk, Cascio lives in Lawrence with her family, including a daughter on the autism spectrum. She and her family like to spend time traveling, cooking, playing and singing music, watching movies, reading, and enjoying Lawrence’s Mutt Run with their two dogs, Dolly and Enzo.