Manuel F. Casanova, M.D.

Gottfried and Gisela Kolb Endowed Chair in Psychiatry

Associate Chair for Research

Department of Psychiatry
500 S Preston St Bldg 55A Ste 210
Louisville, Kentucky 40292-1702
502-852-4077
502-852-4078 (Fax)

News (2008 June 24)

University of Louisville creates multidisciplinary autism center.

Biosketch

Dr. Manuel Casanova made his residency training in neurology and then spent 3 years doing a fellowship in neuropathology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. During his stay at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Casanova was in-charge of Pediatric Neuropathology, a fact which kindled his interest in developmental disorders of the brain. His clinical experience was enhanced by appointments as either a consultant or staff neuropathologist at Sinai Hospital (Maryland), the North Charles Hospital and the D.C. General Hospital. He spent several years as Deputy Medical Examiner for Washington, D.C., where he gained valuable experience in the post-mortem examination of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and child abuse. His expertise in the field was recognized by honorary appointments as a Scientific Expert for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and as a Professorial Lecturer for the Department of Forensic Science at George Washington University. Dr. Casanova spent 8 years helping to establish 2 of the most successful brain banks in this country: The Johns Hopkins Brain Resource Center (3 years) and the Brain Bank Unit of the Clinical Brains Disorders Branch at the National Institutes of Mental Health (5 years). At present, Dr. Casanova is well published in a multitude of postmortem techniques including neuronal morphometry immunocytochemistry, neurochemistry, and autoradiography.

See also this Wikipedia entry.

Research interests

Dr. Casanova has had over twenty years of experience in the neurosciences. Although trained in the classical methods of neurology and neuropathology his interest has gradually shifted towards the study of abnormalities of cortical circuitry. His research has focused on the cell minicolumn, a vertical conglomerate of 80 to 100 neurons having a common latency of response to stimulation. Using computerized imaging analysis he has established the anatomical validity of the cell minicolumn. His earlier work has reported interhemispheric differences in the morphometry of minicolumns that could provide for the speciation of hominids. Localized in Broadmann area 22—part of Wernicke’s language region—the morphometric difference may play a role both in the development of language and in its disorders. His most recent studies have looked for the presence of abnormalities of minicolumnar organization and lateralization in the brains of patients who exhibit language disturbances, including autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and dyslexia. He has summarized his work on minicolumns and provided an overview of the field in recent reviews of the literature appearing in Brain and Brain, Behavior and Evolution.

Online resources

• Alopecia FAQ and coloring book
• Autism Netverse: A Literary Journey for the Autistic Mind

  Created by Vandna Jerath, co-author of the article “Autistic poetry as therapy”

• A summary of Dr. Casanova's work on autism by the National Alliance for Autism Research
• A summary of Dr. Casanova's work on schizophrenia from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

Citations in popular press

• Tom Paulson: “Love hormone” may emerge as a treatment for autism. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2007 May 4.
• Keith Seinfeld: Autism and brain development (radio program). KPLU, Seattle, 2007 May 4.
• Michael Balter: Brain evolution studies go micro. Science 2007; 315: 1208–1211.
• Ingrid Wickelgren: Autistic brains out of synch? Science 2005; 308, 1856–1858.
• Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. 2005 progress report on brain research: Arts and cognition. New York: Dana Press, 2005.
• Kendall Powell: Opening a window to the autistic brain. PLoS biology 2(8):1054-1058. 2004 August 17.
• Lifting the veils of autism, one by one. New York Times, 2004 February 24.

Recent publications

This list only includes publications from the past five years. For earlier work, see the full curriculum vitae. Links to online content are provided when possible, but full text access usually requires a subscription to the relevant journal. Additional content can be found on the Laboratory of Neuropsychiatry publications page.

Casanova MF. The significance of minicolumnar size variability in autism: a perspective from comparative anatomy. In: Zimmerman AW, ed. Autism: Current theories and evidence. Totowa, N.J.: Humana Press; 2008 Oct 15, in press.

Casanova MF. Neuropathological findings in Asperger syndrome. In: Rausch JL, Johnson ME, Casanova MF, eds. Asperger’s disorder. New York: Informa Healthcare; 2008 Jul, in press.

Fajardo C, Escobar MI, Buriticá E, Arteaga G, Umbarila J, Casanova MF, Pimienta H. Von Economo neurons are present in the dorsolateral (dysgranular) prefrontal cortex of humans. Neuroscience Letters 2008 Apr 25; 435(3), 215–218.

Casanova MF, Kreczmanski P, Trippe JT II, Switala AE, Heinsen H, Steinbusch HWM, Schmitz C. Neuronal distribution in the neocortex of schizophrenic patients. Psychiatry Research 2008 Apr 15; 158(3), 267–277.

Casanova MF, Konkachbaev AI, Switala AE, Elmaghraby AS. Recursive trace line method for detecting myelinated bundles: a comparison study with pyramidal cell arrays. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 2008 Mar; 168(2), 367–372.

Seelan RS, Khalyfa A, Lakshmanan J, Casanova MF, Parthasarathy RN. Deciphering the lithium transcriptome: microarray profiling of lithium modulated gene expression in human neuronal cells. Neuroscience 2008 Feb; 151(4), 1184–1197.

Casanova MF, Tillquist CR. Encephalization, emergent properties, and psychiatry: a minicolumnar perspective. The Neuroscientist 2008 Feb; 14(1), 101–118.

Casanova MF. The minicolumnopathy of autism: a link between migraine and gastrointestinal symptoms. Medical Hypotheses 2008 Jan; 70(1), 73–80.

Abd EL Munim H, Farag AA, Casanova MF. Frequency-domain analysis of the human brain for studies of autism. In: ISSPIT 2007. Piscataway, N.J.: IEEE; 2007 Dec 15, 1198–1203.

El-Baz A, Casanova MF, Gimel`farb G, Mott M, Switala A. Autism diagnostics by 3D texture analysis of cerebral white matter gyrifications. In: Ayache N, Ourselin S, Maeder A, eds. Medical image computing and computer-assisted intervention—MICCAI 2007. New York: Springer; 2007 Nov, 882–890.

Casanova MF, Switala AE, Trippe J, Fitzgerald M. Comparative minicolumnar morphometry of three distinguished scientists. Autism 2007 Nov; 11(6), 557–569.

Casanova MF. The neuropathology of autism. Brain Pathology 2007 Oct; 17(4), 422–433.

Johnson SB, Datta S, Hornung CA, Casanova MF. Mathematical models of epigenetic influences in autism: a new perspective based on neuropathological findings. In: Carlisle PC, ed. Progress in autism research. New York: Nova Biomedical; 2007 Oct, 101–114.

Casanova MF. Schizophrenia seen as a deficit in the modulation of cortical minicolumns by monoaminergic systems. International Review of Psychiatry 2007 Aug; 19(4), 361–372.

Hoffman WH, Casanova MF, Cudrici CD, Zakranskaia E, Venugopalan R, Nag S, Oglesbee MJ, Rus H. Neuroinflammatory response of the choroid plexus epithelium in fatal diabetic ketoacidosis. Experimental and Molecular Pathology 2007 Aug; 83(1), 65–72.

Fahmi R, El-Baz A, Abd El-Munim H, Abdel-Hakim AE, Farag AA, Casanova MF. Robust neuroimaging-based classification techniques of autistic vs. typically developing brain. In: Suri JS, Farag A, eds. Deformable models: Theory and biomaterial applications. New York: Springer; 2007 Aug 3, 535–566.

Abd El Munim H, Fahmi R, El-Zehiry NY, Farag A, Casanova MF. Volumetric MRI analysis of dyslexic subjects using a level set framework. In: Suri JS, Farag A, eds. Deformable models: Theory and biomaterial applications. New York: Springer; 2007 Aug 3, 461–492.

Casanova MF, Mott M. The neuropathology of autism: a selective review. Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation 2007 Jul; 2006(3–4), 21–35.

Fahmi R, El-Baz AS, Abd El Munim HE, Farag AA, Casanova MF. Classification techniques for autistic vs. typically developing brain using MRI data. In: Biomedical imaging: From nano to macro, 1348-1351. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE; 2007 May.

El-Baz A, Casanova MF, Gimel’farb G, Mott M, Switala AE. A new image analysis approach for automatic classification of autistic brains. In: Biomedical imaging: From nano to macro, 352-355. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE; 2007 May.

Casanova MF, Steele J. Autism: an overview. Louisville Medicine 2007 Apr; 54(11), 503, 505, 531.

Casanova MF, Farag A, El-Baz A, Mott M, Hassan H, Fahmi R, Switala AE. Abnormalities of the gyral window in autism: a macroscopic correlate to a putative minicolumnopathy. Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation 2007 Jan; 2006(1–2), 85–101.

Casanova MF, Switala AE, Trippe JT II. A comparison study of the vertical bias of pyramidal cells in the hippocampus and neocortex. Developmental Neuroscience 2007 Jan; 29(1–2), 193–200.

Casanova MF, Trippe JT II, Switala AE. A temporal continuity to the vertical organization of the human neocortex. Cerebral Cortex 2007 Jan; 17(1), 130–137.

Casanova MF. Cortical circuit abnormalities in the brains of autistic patients. In: Martos Pérez J, González PM, Llorente Comí M, Nieto C, eds. New developments in autism: the future is today. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 2006 Dec 30, 267–288. [Spanish version here]

Chance SA, Casanova MF, Switala AE, Crow TJ. Minicolumnar structure in Heschl’s gyrus and planum temporale: asymmetries in relation to sex and callosal fiber number. Neuroscience 2006 Dec 28; 143(4), 1041–1050.

El-Baz A, Farag A, Ali A, Gimel’farb G, Casanova M. A framework for unsupervised segmentation of multi-modal medical images. In: Beichel RR, Sonka M, eds. Computer vision approaches to medical image analysis, 120–131. New York: Springer, 2006 Nov.

Casanova MF, Kooten IAJ van, Switala AE, Engeland H van, Heinsen H, Steinbusch HWM, Hof PR, Schmitz C. Abnormalities of cortical minicolumnar organization in the prefrontal lobes of autistic patients. Clinical Neuroscience Research 2006 Oct; 6(3–4), 127–133.

Casanova MF. Neuropathological and genetic findings in autism: the significance of a putative minicolumnopathy. The NeuroScientist 2006 Oct 1; 12(5), 435–441.

Casanova MF, Kooten IAJ van, Switala AE, Engeland H van, Heinsen H, Steinbusch HWM, Hof PR, Trippe J, Stone J, Schmitz C. Minicolumnar abnormalities in autism. Acta Neuropathologica 2006 Sep; 112(3), 287–303.

Parthasarathy LK, Seelan RS, Tobias CR, Casanova MF, Parthasarathy RN. Mammalian inositol 3-phosphate synthase: its role in the biosynthesis of brain inositol and its clinical use as psychoactive agent. In: Majumder AL, Biswas BB, eds. Biology of inositols and phosphoinositides, 291-312. New York: Springer, 2006 Jul 21.

Casanova MF, Trippe JT II. Regulatory mechanisms of cortical laminar development. Brain research: Brain research reviews 2006 Jun; 51(1), 72–84.

El-Zehiry N, Casanova MF, Hassan H, Farag AA. Effect of minicolumnar disturbance on dyslexic brains: an MRI study. Biomedical imaging: Macro to nano, 1336-1339. Piscataway, N.J.: IEEE, 2006 May.

Chance SA, Casanova MF, Switala AE, Crow TJ, Esiri MM. Minicolumn thinning in temporal lobe association cortex but not primary auditory cortex in normal human ageing. Acta Neuropathologica 2006 May; 111(5), 459–464.

Kruesi MJP, Casanova MF. White matter in liars. The British Journal of Psychiatry 2006 Mar; 188(3), 293–294.

Seelan RS, Janckila AJ, Parthasarathy RN, Casanova MF. The importance of using equimolar DNA for transfection analysis of the 5′ flanking promoter regions of genes. Analytical Biochemistry 2006 Feb 15; 349(2), 306–308.

Casanova MF, ed. Recent developments in autism research. Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2005 Nov 30. [Table of contents]

Casanova MF. Minicolumnar pathology in autism. In: Casanova MF (ed.). Recent developments in autism research. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 133–143.

Casanova MF, Christensen JD, Giedd J, Rumsey JM, Garver DL, Postel GC. Magnetic resonance imaging study of brain asymmetries in dyslexic patients. Journal of Child Neurology 2005 Oct; 20(10), 842–847.

Casanova MF, ed. Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2005 Sep 30. [Table of contents]

Daniel Buxhoeveden, Manuel F. Casanova. The cell column in comparative anatomy. In: Manuel F. Casanova (ed.). Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 93–116.

Daniel Buxhoeveden, Manuel F. Casanova. Encephalization, minicolumns, and hominid evolution. In: Manuel F. Casanova (ed.). Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 117–136.

Manuel F. Casanova. Vernon B. Mountcastle: a life that transformed the neurosciences. In: Manuel F. Casanova (ed.). Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 1–13.

Manuel F. Casanova. An apologia for a paradigm shift in the neurosciences. In: Manuel F. Casanova (ed.). Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 33–55.

Manuel F. Casanova, Andrew E. Switala. Minicolumnar morphometry: computerized image analysis. In: Manuel F. Casanova (ed.). Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 161–179.

Juan Trippe II, Manuel F. Casanova. Vernon B. Mountcastle: scientific achievements. In: Manuel F. Casanova (ed.). Neocortical modularity and the cell minicolumn. New York: Nova Biomedical Books; 2005, 15–32.

Konkachbaev AI, Casanova MF, Graham JH, Elmaghraby AS. Automated recursive segmentation of large neocortical images using standard deviation as termination criteria. 27th International Conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2531–2534. Piscataway, N.J.: IEEE, 2005 Sep.

Casanova MF. Anomalías en los circuitos corticales en los cerebros de pacientes con autismo. In: Martos J, González PM, Llorente M, Nieto C, eds. Nuevos desarrollos en autismo: el futuro es hoy. Madrid: Librería Paradox; 2005 May, 345–371. [English version here]

Konkachbaev AI, Elmaghraby AS, Casanova MF. Recursive segmentation of minicolums using myelinated bundles. Neural engineering 2005: conference proceedings, 52–55. Piscataway, N.J.: IEEE, 2005 Mar.

Casanova MF, de Zeeuw L, Switala AE, Kreczmanski P, Korr H, Ulfig N, Heinsen H, Steinbusch HWM, Schmitz C. Mean cell spacing abnormalities in the neocortex of patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research 2005 Jan 30; 133(1), 1–12.

Kruesi MJP, Casanova MF, Mannheim G, Johnson-Bilder A. Reduced temporal lobe volume in early onset conduct disorder. Psychiatry research: Neuroimaging 2004 Nov 15; 132(1), 1–11.

Buxhoeveden DP, Casanova MF. Accelerated maturation in brains of patients with Down syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research 2004 Oct; 48(7), 704–705.

Casanova MF. White matter volume increase and minicolumns in autism. Annals of Neurology 2004 Sep; 56(3), 453.

Casanova MF. Intracortical circuitry: One of Psychiatry’s missing assumptions. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 2004 Jun; 254(3), 148–151.

Casanova MF, Araque J, Giedd J, Rumsey JM. Reduced brain size and gyrification in the brains of dyslexic patients. Journal of Child Neurology 2004 Apr; 19(4), 275–281.

Roy E, Casanova MF, Jerath V. Autistic poetry as therapy. Journal of Poetry Therapy 2004 Mar; 17(1), 33–38.

Casanova MF, Buxhoeveden DP, Gomez J. Disruption in the inhibitory architecture of the cell minicolumn: implications for autism. The Neuroscientist 2003 Dec; 9(6), 496–507.

Casanova MF, Araque J. Mineralization of the basal ganglia: implications for neuropsychiatry, pathology and neuroimaging. Psychiatry Research 2003 Nov; 121(1), 59–87.

Casanova MF, Lindzen EC. Changes in gray-/white-matter ratios in the parahippocampal gyri of late-onset schizophrenia patients. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 2003 Nov; 11(6), 605–609.

Casanova MF, Buxhoeveden DP, Switala AE, Roy E. Rett syndrome as a minicolumnopathy. Clinical Neuropathology 2003 Jul; 22(4), 163–168.

Casanova MF. Preservation of hippocampal pyramidal cells in paraphrenia. Schizophrenia Research 2003 Jul 1; 62(1–2), 141–146.

Casanova MF. Modular concepts of brain organization and the neuropathology of psychiatric conditions. Psychiatry Research 2003 May 1; 118(1), 101–102.