She is a faculty member in the Brain Research Intitute and Mental Retardation Research Center. Her research aims to understand genetic, cognitive and neurobiological risk factors for the development of child- and adolescent-onset neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Bearden's work examines these questions through two complementary lines of research: 1) the investigation of intermediate traits associated with adolescent-onset neuropsychiatric disorders, and 2) the study of neurobehavioral manifestations of syndromes with an identified genetic origin.