Evan Balaban has previously held professorial positions at Harvard University; the City University of New York; McGill University; the Scuola Internazionale di Studi Avanzati (Trieste, Italy) and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain). He also headed the Laboratory of Neural and Behavioral Development at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA for seven years; and was Program Director in Neural Systems at the Biology Directorate of the National Science Foundation for seven years.  His research focuses on mechanisms underlying the development of neural circuitry for specific behaviors and for larger-scale brain functional changes at the end of prenatal development in embryos.

His research interests include: 

• Developmental Biology
• Systems neurobiology of behavioral circuit development and mechanisms of evolutionary change
• Neuronal transplantation
• Relationship between neural, behavioral and cognitive development
• Human, small animal and embryo in-vivo brain imaging (PET, CT, MRI, fMRI, electrophysiology)
• Auditory and vocal communication in humans and animals
• Structure, function and development of auditory neural circuits and auditory perception

Relevance to IDD

Dr. Balaban's current work examines mechanisms underlying a shift in systems brain function towards the end of embryonic life.  Before this shift, brain activity patterns allow cells to build more refined patterns of functional connections with each other, using a subset of the synaptic mechanisms that fully-functioning (“adult-like”) nervous systems employ. At the same time, a variety of neural and non-neural mechanisms block the embryonic brain from receiving outside stimulation. After this shift, embryonic brains become open to outside stimulation and operate with a mostly full set of “adult-like” synaptic mechanisms. The relevance of this work to IDD is that mutations, chemical exposure and events such as premature birth may all interfere with these important changes in brain development. A more complete understanding of the developmental processes being interfered with is highly likely to lead to new insights into the etiology of a variety of intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as new kinds of treatments for minimizing their negative effects.