F. Xavier Castellanos, M.D.

F. Xavier Castellanos, M.D.

Research Scientist
Clinical Research
845-398-2899

Xavier Castellanos studied Chomskian linguistics at Vassar College, experimental psychology at the University of New Orleans, and medicine at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He was in the first cohort of “triple board” residents (combined training in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry) at the University of Kentucky, after which he spent a decade conducting child psychiatry research at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda. In 2001, he moved to New York University, where he is an endowed Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Professor of Radiology and Neuroscience at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He has been a research psychiatrist at the Nathan Kline Institute since 2006, with a focus on using intrinsic functional connectivity-based approaches in human and translational studies. He was an early advocate of examining low-frequency fluctuations in brain function and in behavior – both of which have become mainstream lines of investigation. He has been consistently identified as among the top 1% of cited scientists in psychiatric neuroscience. Dr. Castellanos has served on many national and international review committees, and was Vice-Chair of the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Workgroup on ADHD.

Select Publications

  • Castellanos FX, Tannock R. Neuroscience of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: the search for endophenotypes. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2002 Aug;3(8):617-28. 

  • Castellanos FX, Lee PP, Sharp W, Jeffries NO, Greenstein DK, Clasen LS, Blumenthal JD, James RS, Ebens CL, Walter JM, Zijdenbos A, Evans AC, Giedd JN, Rapoport JL. Developmental trajectories of brain volume abnormalities in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. JAMA. 2002 Oct 9;288(14):1740-8.

  • Castellanos FX, Sonuga-Barke EJ, Milham MP, Tannock R. Characterizing cognition in ADHD: beyond executive dysfunction. Trends Cogn Sci. 2006 Mar;10(3):117-23.

  • Castellanos FX, Margulies DS, Kelly C, Uddin LQ, Ghaffari M, Kirsch A, Shaw D, Shehzad Z, Di Martino A, Biswal B, Sonuga-Barke EJ, Rotrosen J, Adler LA, Milham MP. Cingulate-precuneus interactions: a new locus of dysfunction in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Biol Psychiatry. 2008 Feb 1;63(3):332-7.

  • Sonuga-Barke EJ, Castellanos FX. Spontaneous attentional fluctuations in impaired states and pathological conditions: a neurobiological hypothesis. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2007;31(7):977-86.