Armin Raznahan, M.D., Ph.D.

Senior Investigator

Section on Developmental Neurogenomics, Human Genetics Branch

NIMH

Magnuson Clinical Center (Building 10), Room 4N242
10 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20814

301-435-7927

raznahana@mail.nih.gov

Research Topics

The Section on Developmental Neurogenomics (SDN) is dedicated to better understanding the biology of childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorders in ways that might ultimately help to improve disease prediction, detection and treatment. Together with our collaborators, we work towards this goal in two mutually-informative ways.

First, we use large-scale neuroimaging datasets to study the architecture of brain development in healthy volunteers. By modeling how neuroimaging measures of the human brain vary with age, sex and behavior in health, we hope to advance basic developmental neuroscience while also providing a data-driven way of selecting neuroimaging measures that should be prioritized for study in atypically developing groups.

Second, we use a “genetics-first” strategy to study the relationship between atypical brain development and neuropsychiatric symptoms. This effort involves gathering “deep-phenotypic” data (spanning measures of gene expression, brain structure/function, psychophysiology, cognition and behavior) in diverse genetic disorders which all increase risk for neuropsychiatric impairment. Guided by knowledge of typical development, we harness these clinical data to empirically dissect the diverse biological pathways that can contribute to the emergence of neuropsychiatric syndromes.

Cross-cutting themes of special interest within our Section include sex-differences, allometry, and structure-function relationships within the central nervous system.

Biography

Armin Raznahan, MD, PhD, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and Chief of the Section on Developmental Neurogenomics (SDN). His research combines neuroimaging, genomic and bioinformatic techniques to better understand the architecture of human brain development in health, and in neurogenetic disorders that increase risk for psychiatric symptoms. Dr. Raznahan completed his undergraduate and graduate training in London, UK (Medicine and pediatrics at King’s College University/ Hospital; psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital), and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Jay Giedd and Judith Rapoport at the NIMH Intramural Research Program. Dr. Raznahan joined the NIH-Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Program in 2015, and became a tenured Senior Investigator at the NIMH IRP in 2020.

Dr. Raznahan is a member of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists, the UK Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). He currently serves as an editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NeuroImage, and Aperture. Dr. Raznahan also serves on the ACNP Diversity and Inclusion Task Force and the ACNP Membership Committee, the AXYS (Association for X- and Y-Chromosome Variations) Advisory Committee, the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences Council, and the French Autism and Neuro-Developmental Disorders Scientific Advisory Board. The Section of Developmental Neurogenomics has been recognized by awards from the NIMH Director (Outstanding Mentorship and Scientific Contributions), ACNP (Eva King-Killam Award for Translational Research) and the American Psychopathological Association (Robins-Guze Award).

Selected Publications

  1. Liu S, Akula N, Reardon PK, Russ J, Torres E, Clasen LS, Blumenthal J, Lalonde F, McMahon FJ, Szele F, Disteche CM, Cader MZ, Raznahan A. Aneuploidy effects on human gene expression across three cell types. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023;120(21):e2218478120.
  2. Lee NR, Niu X, Zhang F, Clasen LS, Kozel BA, Smith ACM, Wallace GL, Raznahan A. Variegation of autism related traits across seven neurogenetic disorders. Transl Psychiatry. 2022;12(1):149.
  3. Mallard TT, Liu S, Seidlitz J, Ma Z, Moraczewski D, Thomas A, Raznahan A. X-chromosome influences on neuroanatomical variation in humans. Nat Neurosci. 2021;24(9):1216-1224.
  4. Liu S, Seidlitz J, Blumenthal JD, Clasen LS, Raznahan A. Integrative structural, functional, and transcriptomic analyses of sex-biased brain organization in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020;117(31):18788-18798.
  5. Reardon PK, Seidlitz J, Vandekar S, Liu S, Patel R, Park MTM, Alexander-Bloch A, Clasen LS, Blumenthal JD, Lalonde FM, Giedd JN, Gur RC, Gur RE, Lerch JP, Chakravarty MM, Satterthwaite TD, Shinohara RT, Raznahan A. Normative brain size variation and brain shape diversity in humans. Science. 2018;360(6394):1222-1227.

Related Scientific Focus Areas

This page was last updated on Tuesday, January 30, 2024