Dustin Hines, April Contreras, Betsua Garcia, Jeffrey Barker, and Rochelle Hines (all Psychology), all part of The Hines Group, published a manuscript in Molecular Psychiatry along with collaborators from Boston Children's Hospital and Tufts University School of Medicine. The manuscript increases the understanding of the mechanisms behind syndromic intellectual disability. The study specifically demonstrates a central role for the GABAA receptor alpha2 subunit in human syndromic intellectual disability caused by mutation in a gene known as ARHGEF9. Such mechanistic understanding is critical for understanding the causes underlying symptoms, and also the development of new targeted therapies to improve patient outcomes. Garcia is an undergraduate, while Contreras and Barker are graduate students.