Yale Secures $25M ARIA Grant to Map Developing Brain, Autism Origins
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NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Aug. 31, 2026 -- Yale School of Medicine has secured a nearly $25 million grant from the Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) initiative to build the first high-resolution map of the developing human brain and pinpoint where autism diverges from typical neural development.
The award, part of ARIA's Human Developmental Neurobiology Research Hub, funds two Yale-led projects within a four-project collaboration that also involves Harvard University. Combined, the initiative targets a gap researchers say has stalled autism drug and diagnostic development for decades: no detailed reference map exists for how the human brain wires itself in the first years of life.