Hello! You’re receiving this email because you’ve been a part of the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (KCART) journey over the years —  whether through our research, community events, or past connections. We are so excited to officially launch this newsletter as a way to stay connected.

Here you'll find the latest updates on our research, helpful resources for families, and reminders about upcoming events designed to support the neurodiverse community across Kansas, and beyond. 

Thank you for being a part of the KCART community.

Best,
Sean Swindler
Director of community program development and evaluation, KCART

At KCART, we are committed to supporting autistic individuals of all abilities and advancing research that helps improve quality of life for autistic people and their families. Autism is diverse, and everyone’s experience is unique.

What this means:

Learn more about KCART’s approach and values.

On behalf of the University of Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (KCART), I'm happy to welcome you to the first edition of KCART's newsletter. Our goal is to connect with the communities we aim to serve, including autistic individuals, family members, individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions, providers, educators and researchers.

At KCART, we are committed to supporting autistic individuals of all abilities and advancing research that helps improve quality of life for autistic people and their families. We conduct research, train the next generation of researchers, advocate, and connect the community to key resources and supports. 

We are passionate about this work, and I invite you to join us. Through this newsletter we will share new knowledge from research, highlight opportunities to participate, and offer community support. 

We are interested in hearing from you. If you have questions about our work, ideas for information to include, or if we can be of service, contact us by email at kcart@ku.edu, by phone at 913-897-8471, and follow us on social media. 

Our mission is to advocate for and support autistic people, individuals with related neurodevelopmental issues, and their families across the lifespan. We look forward to partnering with you. Thank you for joining us.

Matt Mosconi, Ph.D.
Director, Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (KCART)
Associate Director/Senior Scientist, KU Life Span Institute
Professor, KU Department of Clinical Child Psychology

March 31st - Blue Valley Resource Fair. View more information.

April 4th - 2026 Autism Society of the Heartland 5k/1k Fun Run. View more information.

April 16th - Topeka School Autism Awareness Night. View more information.

Autism Across the Life Span, our community event, will be back in spring 2027.

KCART’s Dr. Linda Heitzman-Powell discussed the OASIS parent and provider training and Kansas Family Support Center programs focusing on children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and autism.

“Our impetus was families," Heitzman-Powell said. "It always has been. It’s identifying a need of families in the field and then trying to develop programs that can address that, and then diligently working to get that program back out into the field.” 

KCART Director Matt Mosconi and researcher Kathryn Unruh responded to recent changes in federal guidance on autism published in Nov. 2025 on the CDC website.

Unruh said, "As an autism researcher, we are quite concerned with how this may misdirect attention as well as the critical funding we may need for studies that will support autistic individuals and their families."

The changes "unfortunately contains multiple inaccurate or misleading statements,” said Mosconi. "The CDC message ignores many studies that have been conducted on this topic. And, my expectation is that this statement is confusing for individuals and families, and it has strong potential to be harmful.”

Carissa Cascio, a senior scientist at the KU Life Span Institute and Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training, reinforced that autism is “strictly diagnosed based on behavior.”

“There are genes that have an association with autism that you can test for. There’s some genes that have a very strong association, and you can do a test for the presence of one of those genes,” Cascio said. “But for the diagnosis of autism itself, it’s strictly based on behavior.”

Nancy Brady discussed new breakthroughs in language development with KU News. Brady said that “the feedback loop that leads to spoken language and more symbolic language” begins in infancy with behaviors like babbling and reaching.

“When they combine that with a look right at you, it's really clear that they are communicating with you, versus if they're just sort of playing with their toys and babbling,” she said. “So on our scale, they get different credit for how and when they add those different components. If they are combining vocalization and a gesture and a look, they get the highest grade on the pre-linguistic part of the scale.”

View all KU autism news.

Cascio’s team at LASR published a paper examining the relationships between sensory processing difficulties and anxiety in autistic individuals

A study led by postdoctoral fellow Alisa Zoltowski focused on understanding the relationship between anxiety in autistic individuals and sensory signals from inside the body, known as our sense of interoception (e.g., sensations of a racing heart or rapid breathing). This is an important study because it highlights important contributing factors to anxiety-related issues in some autistic individuals. It may have important clues into more individualized treatment approaches for anxiety in autism. 

Many autistic people report that difficulties with sensory processing and anxiety go hand in hand. Anxiety itself comes along with sensory signals from inside the body (interoception). We measured interoception in autistic and non-autistic individuals in two ways: 1) performance-based tasks conducted in the laboratory and 2) self-reported interoceptive ability to detect and interpret interoceptive cues in daily life. We also measured self and/or caregiver anxiety symptoms.

We found that some aspects of reported interoceptive difficulties were closely related to anxiety, but some aspects were unrelated to anxiety. Performance on lab-based measures of interoception were most closely related to those aspects of interoceptive ability that were unrelated to anxiety. This study suggests that people may fall into subtypes based on how much their anxiety depends on interoceptive perception, which may have implications for mindfulness and other somatic-focused anxiety treatment approaches.

View the summary of the paper, Sensory Processing and Anxiety: Within and Beyond the Autism Spectrum. 

View all recent scholarly publications on the KCART website.

Every day, our researchers conduct research that has the potential to change people’s lives. We seek volunteers for those research programs. Some children and adults who volunteer may have specific diagnoses, while others volunteer to serve as controls or people who don’t have a diagnosis. We seek a variety of participants across age, gender, disability, race, and region.

Here are some of the studies on our research page that are looking for individuals and families now:

Researchers at KU are testing whether the medication Pimavanserin (Nuplazid) may be helpful for reducing challenging behaviors in autistic individuals, including difficulties with transitions, resistance to change, or distress when routines are interrupted. 

This study is the first opportunity to assess the effects of this medication in autistic individuals. The goal of this study is to determine if Pimavanserin is helpful in reducing behavioral inflexibility in autistic adolescents and adults. 

Participants will complete comprehensive testing prior to and following medication treatment, including regular monitoring by a study physician. All participants will be compensated for their time. 

To learn more about this study and determine if you may be eligible, please fill in the participation survey form or contact the BRAIN Lab by email  brainlab@ku.edu or by phone at 785-864-3351. 

Sean Swindler: Connecting autism families to research and resources 

With a background that has spanned advocacy, policy, special education and direct service, Sean Swindler is the director of community program development and evaluation at KCART, as well as project manager at Kansas University Center on Disabilities. He has built his career around support for autistic individuals and families. 

Since 2008, he has run the KU autism resource center, which is our primary way to assist families from all over the state of Kansas in navigating the very complex system autistic individuals face from early childhood and diagnostics to transition in adulthood.  

He also helps with the Kansas Family Support Center, which was created through a grant from the state of Kansas to allow KU to do more direct interventions for families in crisis, for example, or autistic kids in danger of being institutionalized or going into foster care.

“What I most like doing is talking to families, self-advocates and adults with autism to help them find the resources they need," Swindler said. "And I'm the parent of a 24-year-old with autism and intellectual disability. So, I've been in the shoes a lot of these families, and a lot of times the things that they're going through. I can relate to them by pointing to a time when I've had that question or had that struggle as well.” 

Read more about Swindler's background and role at KU.

Carissa Cascio: Exploring the links between the brain and the body in autism

Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., 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 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.

While KCART is based at the University of Kansas, its reach goes far beyond campus locations through outreach efforts and close partnerships with community organizations across the region. One of them is Autism Society - The Heartland, or ASH.

ASH serves as the official Kansas and Missouri affiliate of the Autism Society of America. They focus on supporting autistic individuals and their families. ASH offers support groups and collaborates with local service providers to meet the needs of people of all ages and abilities.

On Thursday, April 2, ASH will welcome families to Autism Day at the K. 

Other programs sponsored by ASH include Adults with Autism Recreation Events, or A.W.A.R.E. program, is a social group for adults with autism (ages 18+) who are able to participate in group events with minimal support or supervision. 

Learn more about ASH on our website or visit ASH to find information about their programs.

Our research labs are excited to begin the next chapter in our newly renovated home at Youngberg Hall on the Lawrence Campus, a space designed to spark collaboration, discovery, and innovation.

Youngberg Hall is home to Biobehavioral Research on Autism, Intellectual and Neurodevelopmental disabilities, or the BRAIN lab, led by KCART Director Matt Mosconi, and the Laboratory of Affective Sensory Research, or LASR, led by Carissa Cascio, and several other affiliated KU autism program staff.

Our new location is:

2385 Irving Hill Rd
Lawrence, KS 66045
Youngberg Hall

BRAIN lab:
email: brainlab@ku.edu
phone: 785-864-4461

Laboratory of Affective Sensory Research (LASR):
email: lasr@ku.edu
phone: 785-813-3497

Kansas Family Support Center

Providing Evidence-Based Support, Education, and Training to Serve Kansas Children and Youth with Autism and Other Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities

Email: kfsc@kumc.edu
Phone: 913-945-6619
Website: kfsc.ku.edu/

KCART Autism Resource Center

KU Edwards Campus
12610 Quivira Rd.
Regnier Hall, Suite 270

Email: kfsc@kumc.edu
Phone: 913-897-8471
Webpage: autism.ku.edu/
autism-resource-center

Download Wild Wonders (PDF), our children's activity to explore wild animals. 

2385 Irving Hill Rd
Lawrence, KS 66045
Youngberg Hall
kcart@ku.edu

KCART is a part of the
KU Life Span Institute

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