In this session, Dr. Cook leads a discussion of both the genetics and pharmacological treatment of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Cook is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Health funded Autism Center of Excellence which is focusing on the genetics, neurochemistry, functional imaging, animal models, and pharmacogenetics of the etiology and treatment of insistence on sameness (roughly translated obsessive-compulsive behavior) in autism. He has a particular interest in the most common specific cause of autism, chromosome 15q11-q13 duplications of maternal origin. He has followed patients with autism spectrum disorders and anxiety and/or aggression from early childhood into young adulthood and other patients from young to middle adulthood.