headshot of Jacob Vorstman

Jacob Vorstman

Professor
The Hospital for Sick Children

Jacob Vorstman is associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of the Autism Research Unit at the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada. Initially, his research focused on the psychiatric and genetic aspects of the 22q11.2 deletion. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 2008, he broadened the scope from 22q11.2 deletion syndrome to the study of genotype-phenotype relations in neurodevelopmental conditions — in particular, autism, intellectual disability and schizophrenia. His ambition is to further insights into the genetic architecture underlying these conditions as well as to improve methods to measure the associated phenotypes.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Brain registers spatial location outside hippocampus

A more complex picture of how an animal’s brain tracks its location is starting to emerge.

By Natalia Mesa
5 November 2026 | 1 min watch
Illustration of worm on top of a purple rock with neurons in the background.

The three-banded panther worm is rewriting the story of brain evolution

The animal has a brain structure all its own, according to a 2026 preprint. The finding hints that brains could have evolved centralization before regionalization.

By Sarah DeWeerdt
4 November 2026 | 7 min read

Does cognition happen in brain areas or between them?

Michael Cole explains how "brain flows" are the fundamental units of brain function and cognition.

By Paul Middlebrooks
4 November 2026 | 1 min read