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Research

The BBSU research teams are engaged in theoretically novel research into social communication and eating disorders, the biological basis of social cognition and behaviour, and epidemiology and prevention in child and adolescent mental health.  Many projects are also clinically relevant and focus on the application of new knowledge to patient identification and treatment.

Specific recent and current projects include:

Autism Spectrum Disorder: clinical, neurocognitive and genetic perspectives

Genetic and neural influences on socially adaptive behaviour

Sex chromosome abnormalities and epigenetics: collaborative research

Aetiology and epidemiology of eating disorders

Prevention programmes in child and adolescent mental health

Autism Spectrum Disorder: clinical, neurocognitive and genetic perspectives

Autism family study: contribution of AVPR1a polymorphisms to variation in social cognition

Professor Larry Young (Collaborator) Department of Psychiatry, Emory University
Dr Elisabeth Binder, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (Collaborator)
Professor Kaija Puura, Tampere University Hospital, Department of Child Psychiatry (Collaborator)
Professor David Skuse (Collaborator)
Irene Lee (Experimental Officer)

Studies in highly social and monogamous prairie voles have demonstrated a link between variation in the expression of the vasopressin receptor gene (avpr1a) and social behaviour.  Furthermore, polymorphisms in the promoter of the gene contribute to variation in brain expression patterns and social behaviour.  More recently, several studies have found associations between variation in human behaviour and polymorphisms in the human AVPR1a gene.  In this study we are examining the relationship between these polymorphisms and measures of social cognition in families with a member diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder to determine whether variation in AVPR1a gene structure may contribute to variation in social cognition within these families.

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Association of common genetic variants with the autism spectrum

Patrick Bolton, David Collier and Sarah Curran (Principal Investigators) Social Genetic Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre & Laboratories at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London
Professor David Skuse (Collaborator)
Irene Lee (Experimental Officer) 

This large case-control consortium is currently pursuing evidence for the association of common genetic variants with the autism spectrum but in the future it intends to pursue and interrogate rare genetic variants.

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Communicative impairments of children with autism

Professor Peter Hobson (Principal Investigator)
Dr Jessica Hobson (Principal Investigator)

Funded by: National Institutes of Health; Wellcome Trust; Baily Thomas Charitable Trust; Foundation for Autism Research and Remediation

The Hobson team has been concluding a set of studies on the communicative impairments of children with autism.  Their approach is primarily experimental with a ‘naturalistic’ bias, for example in comparing matched children and adolescents with and without autism for their ability to transmit a message from one person to another, or in assessing the children’s quality of non-verbal communication in the course of a conversation.  Another approach has been to study these children’s use of personal pronouns.  A further set of studies of imitation have focused on participants’ propensity to copy actions from another person’s stance, for example in copying another person’s actions-towards-herself by enacting those actions-towards-themselves.

These studies point to an abnormality in autism that might have far-reaching developmental consequences: a weakness in the propensity to ‘identify with’ other people.  Across a range of settings, children with autism appear to have a relative lack of the natural inclination to be ‘moved by’ and attune with another person’s communicative gestures, and to link in with others’ mental orientations.  For example, they rarely nod or shake their heads when another person is speaking, they seldom take the role of the other in communication, and they infrequently adopt a ‘self-orientation’ when copying other people.  This lack of perspective-taking may be important for a broader range of the children’s difficulties in moving flexibly among alternative viewpoints on the world.

Current work focuses on i) links among symbolic play and social-cognitive profiles in young children with and without autism; ii) flexibility in language and communication among verbally able children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders; iii) dialogue and pragmatic profiles in verbally able adolescents with autism; and iv) relations between social and cognitive development across these areas in children with autism receiving treatment.

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Investigation of the autism phenotype

Professor David Skuse (Principal Investigator)
Dr Will Mandy (Lecturer in Clinical Psychology)
Marianna Murin (Senior Clinical Psychologist)

This strand of research has a strong clinical focus, and arises from the Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit’s close links with the National Centre for High Functioning Autism (NCHFA) at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Through systematic assessment of children and young people assessed at NCHFA using standardized, gold-standard measures we have constructed a database containing detailed phenotypic data for over 1200 individuals. This unique resource has afforded investigation of a range of clinically and theoretically important topics, including gender differences in autism, the nosological validity of the ASD diagnoses and the structure and nature of autistic symptomatology. Related investigations have sought to better understand the genetic basis of autism, through investigation of the broader autism phenotype and candidate gene studies.

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Investigating functional and structural brain connectivity in ASD

Professor David Skuse (Primary Supervisor)
Professor Chris Clark (Secondary Supervisor)
Juejing Ren (PhD Student)

Funded by: Erasmus Mundus External Co-operation Window Studentship

This study will characterise differences in brain structure and function between normal individuals and ASD patients. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we will acquire structural images. We will also acquire functional MRI (fMRI) data at rest and during tasks. The ‘resting-state’ fMRI data allows assessment of baseline functional connectivity between different brain regions. The task-related fMRI will examine differences in neural processes engaged whilst participants doing Theory of Mind tasks.

Additionally, as a contributor to the UK 10K project, we will be requesting DNA, extracted from a saliva sample to allow genotyping of participants by our collaborators. Identified polymorphism in neurochemical receptors will then be used as covariates in our imaging analysis.

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Recognising emotions from faces – is it inherited?

Dr Chiara Fiorentini (Postdoctoral Fellow and Principal Investigator)
Professor David Skuse (Project Supervisor)
Funded by: Swiss National Science Foundation

Our ability to recognise facial expressions is fundamental to our development of communication skills and helps us in our everyday social interactions.

People with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often have problems in understanding emotional expressions. They also “look at” others’ faces in ways that are unusual, such as avoiding eye-contact. Occasionally, family members of children with ASD have ways of looking at faces which are similar to those of the children themselves. Discovering how parents of children with ASD “read” facial expressions can lead us to understand how emotion recognition abilities are inherited. This study can help the search for autism susceptibility genes and also promote intervention programs for improving emotion recognition abilities in people with ASD.  Chiara Fiorentini is currently completing this study from her new position at The Australian National University, Canberra.

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Supporting children with ASD in mainstream education

Professor David Skuse (Principal Investigator)
Seonaid Anderson & Ozlem Baykaner (Research Assistants)
Sara Staunton (Speach and Language Therapist)

Funded by: Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity

During many of the assessments that we carry out at the Social Communication Disorders Clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital, we hear parents raise concerns about the problems they anticipate when their child moves from primary to secondary school. There has been little formal research carried out into the difficulties that children with autistic spectrum disorders face when moving schools. As such there are no established ways or methods of supporting children through this experience.

Our project will formally look at the difficulties and stresses that occur when a child moves to secondary school. Through examining closely the difficulties that the child experiences and looking at school provision for special educational needs and other environmental factors such as class size, we are aiming to identify specific ‘risk factors’. We are also hoping to identify areas of ‘best practice’ to help identify factors that support children to achieve. By recognising these risk factors, we hope to be able to inform school and government policy on supporting children with autism spectrum disorders in mainstream education.

We also wish to create our own standardised support package that primary and secondary schools can use to help them to put in appropriate support during the transition. It is hoped that by establishing a proactive and preventative intervention, and helping education providers to fully understand the needs of children with autism spectrum disorder, more young people will achieve their academic potential.

For more information and ways to participate, please see the project website.

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UK10K Project

Professor David Skuse (Collaborator)
Irene Lee (Experimental Officer)
Dr Will Mandy (Clinical Psychologist)

The Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit, in collaboration with the Social Communications Disorders Clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital, is the largest single contributor of DNA from children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to the UK10K Project led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK.  Through exome sequencing we hope to learn more about how our genetic make-up can contribute to the risk of conditions such as ASD. We are very grateful to all the families that have taken part in our research over the past 10 years and anticipate that the first results will become available early in 2012.  For more information about UK10K, see the project website.
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Genetic and neural influences on socially adaptive behaviour

The role of the EFHC2 gene in emotion recognition abilities, theory of mind, and brain activations in healthy males

Professor David Skuse (Project Supervisor)
Dr Michelle De Haan, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (Secondary Supervisor)
Carla Startin (PhD Student)

Funded by: Child Health Research Appeal Trust (Great Ormond Street Hospital) PhD Studentship

Our main aim is to test the hypothesis that a relatively common (~10%) variant of an X-linked gene (EFHC2) is associated with reduced social cognition in healthy males. This gene is associated with impaired fear recognition abilities in women with Turner syndrome (X monosomy), and as healthy males also possess only one X chromosome we are investigating the effects of this gene in males.

We have collected a large number of DNA samples from healthy males and genotyped these to determine which variant of the EFHC2 gene they possess. Based on this information, we have tested groups of males with the different variants of the EFHC2 gene on their emotion recognition and theory of mind abilities; we have also used eye tracking to record participants eye movements. We will next investigate brain activations while participants view emotional faces; this will be done using event related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Should there be significant findings relating to role of EFHC2 in social cognition, it may shed light on why there is an excess of disorders of social cognition such as autism in males.

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Social Cognitive Development in Preterm Infants

Professor David Skuse (Project Supervisor)
Professor Neil Marlow (Secondary Supervisor)
Dr Michelle De Haan, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (Collaborator)
Charlotte Sanderson (PhD Student)

Funded by: UCL Grand Challenges PhD Studentship and Sparks Children's Medical Research Charity

Advances in neonatal intensive care have greatly improved the survival chances of infants born preterm. However, the prevalence of neurodevelopmental disability in very preterm (VP) infants (i.e. babies born at <30weeks gestation) is still high (>50%). Emerging evidence indicates that preterm infants are at an increased risk for difficulties with social interaction and communication, and are also more likely to receive a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder. However, little is known about the early detection of these difficulties in these infants. 

The key aim of this longitudinal project is to develop a range of measures that assess early social cognitive development in VP survivors from early infancy. The investigation draws upon a variety of techniques including corneal-reflection eye-tracking, EEG, looking time and standardised assessments. By following up throughout later infancy and childhood, is hoped that findings will help to identify specific risk factors for later social and communication difficulties, and in turn, help to inform targeted intervention strategies.

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Heritability of cooperative behaviour

Professor David Skuse (Principal Investigator)
Dr Esther Kessler (Postdoctoral Research Associate)
Fiona Roberts (Project Coordinator & Research Associate)
Irene Lee (Experimental Officer)

Funded by: Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union (GEBACO)

UCL is the coordinating partner of the GEBACO consortium which brings together nine research centres with diverse specialisms, from six European countries, in a large project funded by the European Union. GEBACO aims to investigate the evolutionary basis of cooperation and bring us closer to an understanding of its genetic roots through a series of integrated multi-disciplinary studies.

The first stage of our research here at BBSU is a large twin study in collaboration with the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College London.  Using ‘games’ drawn from experimental economics, we aim to establish the heritability of cooperative and related behaviours, and assess whether certain personality traits and cooperative behaviour style share genetic influences.

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Genetic associations with prosocial and antisocial behaviour

Following on from the heritability study described immediately above, we will attempt to identify specific genes that are associated with pro-social and antisocial behaviours, using similar behavioural measures and genetic testing in a large student sample.

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Adaptive neural responses to cooperation and betrayal in a repeated trust game

Professor David Skuse (Principal Investigator)
Dr Adam Smith (Clinical Research Fellow)

Funded by: Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union (GEBACO)

This study is also part of the GEBACO project described above. Trust and decisions to trust are fundamental to human cooperative interactions, and a crucial aspect of effective social decision-making is the ability to adapt decision-making based on memory of previous interactions. In this study a methodology has been developed for using functional neuroimaging to examine the impact of emotional memories of previous interactions on decisions to trust or not to trust specific individuals. We are using a novel multi-round version of the ‘Trust Game’ from experimental economics to investigate subjects’ abilities to modify their trust behaviour based on previous experiences during serial interactions with a number of partners, and their patterns of neural activity during such behaviour.

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Integrating Cooperation Research across Europe (INCORE)

Professor David Skuse (Project Leader)
Fiona Roberts (Project Coordinator)

Funded by: Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union

Evidence of cooperation is found everywhere in the natural world, but human society is unusual in that it involves large-scale cooperation between unrelated individuals.  This extended capacity to cooperate is a key component of what it means to be human and has been fundamental to the success of our species as a whole.

Over recent years there has been a rapid expansion in scientific research aimed at developing our understanding of the evolution, dynamics and mechanisms of cooperative behaviour.  The central objective of the INCORE consortium is to bring together researchers from diverse fields and to promote the value of an interdisciplinary approach to answering the many important questions that remain about why and how humans cooperate.

Funding for the INCORE project has recently closed.  Information about its partner groups, events and resources, are archived on the project website.

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Sex chromosome abnormalities and epigenetics – collaborative research

Epigenomic studies of Turner Syndrome 

Professor Arturas Petronis (Principal Investigator) Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto
Professor David Skuse (Collaborator)
Irene Lee (Experimental Officer)

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Aetiology and epidemiology of eating disorders

Biological and psychological risk factors for eating disorders behaviours in adolescence

Dr Nadia Micali (Principal Investigator)

Funded by: NIHR

Nadia Micali developed questions to study the prevalence of disordered eating in the children of ALSPAC (The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and their Children) at the age of 14 and 16 and will be studying these in detail, including risk factors over the next four years.  The investigation will include models of risk for eating disorders (both genetic and environmental) as well as trajectories of disordered eating in the ALSPAC cohort.

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The intergenerational transmission of eating disorders and neurocognitive functioning

Dr Nadia Micali (Principal Investigator)
Rhada Kothari (PhD Student)

Funded by: Wellchild

The aim of this research is to explore patterns that may affect risk status for disordered eating in adolescence and young adulthood. Deficits in neurocognitive functioning have been consistently observed in eating disordered groups.  This research uses data from the ALSPAC (The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and their Children) study to investigate the possible intergenerational relationships between maternal eating disorders, childhood neurocognitive functioning, and later adolescent eating disorder related behaviours.

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The effect of maternal eating disorders on pregnancy, infant and child development

Dr Nadia Micali (Principal Investigator)
Abigail Easter (PhD Student)
Emma Taboreli (Researcher)
Key collaborators:
Professor Janet Treasure, IoP, KCL
Professor Ulrike Schmidt, IoP, KCL

Funded by: NIHR

Dr Nadia Micali and Professor Janet Treasure (KCL) are leading a work-package as part of a large (£2 million) NIHR programme grant to Professor Ulrike Schmidt (KCL) on the treatment of eating disorders. They are studying the effect of maternal eating disorder symptoms, nutrition and stress on the developing foetus and infant (including obstetric outcomes, feeding, growth, development and stress response), with a view to developing successful interventions for pregnant women with eating disorders. They are also collecting qualitative data from participants.

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Empirical classification in adolescent eating disorders: ALSPAC, Growing Up Today Study

Dr Nadia Micali (Principal Investigator)
Francesca Solmi (PhD Student)
Key collaborators:
Dr Alison Field (Children's Hospital Boston, USA)

Funded by: NIMH (USA)

This study involves the collection of data from 18 year-olds in the ALSPAC (UK) and Growing Up Today Study (USA) - the two largest adolescent cohorts that have collected data on eating disorder behaviours.  We will investigate eating disorder phenotypes and derive empirical classifications and compare these to DSM-IV diagnoses in the two cohorts.

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The epidemiology of eating disorders in south east London: SELCoH


Dr Nadia Micali (Principal Investigator)
Francesca Solmi (PhD Student)
Key collaborators:
Professor Matthew Hotopf and Dr Stephani Hatch, IoP, KCL

Funded by: The British Academy

We are investigating the prevalence and correlates of eating disorders as part of a larger study, the South East London Community Health (SELCoH).

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Eating patterns and mental health in a population-based cohort: the Copenhagen Child cohort 2000

Dr Nadia Micali (Principal Investigator)
Key collaborators:
Dr Anne Mette Skovgaard, Dr Pia Jeppesen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Anja Munkholm (PhD Student)

Funded by: Institute of Social Psychiatry

As part of a larger study investigating the psychiatric morbidity in a cohort of 6000 children aged 5 (CCCC2000) we have been investigating eating patterns and difficulties (and predictors of these) in the cohort.  We are currently analysing data on predictors of eating patterns and difficulties and will be following up the children at age 11, investigating eating behaviours and body image.

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Prevention programmes in child and adolescent mental health

Evaluation of training in a systematic approach to emotional abuse: FRAMEA – Framework for the Recognition, Assessment and Management of Emotional Abuse

Dr Danya Glaser (Principal Investigator)
Vivien Prior (Senior Research Fellow)
Collaborators:
Professor Peter Fonagy, UCL and Anna Freud Centre
Dr Rob Senior, UCL and Tavistock Clinic
Dr Eilis Kennedy, Tavistock Clinic

Funded by: Department for Children, Schools and Families and Department of Health (Safeguarding Children Research Initiative)

The framework for the recognition, assessment and management of emotional abuse (FRAMEA) organises factors pertinent to overall child maltreatment, including specifically emotional abuse and emotional neglect, into four tiers, namely:

Tier 0: Environmental and social circumstances
Tier 1: Parental risk factors or attributes
Tier 2: Harmful parent-child interactions; five categories are distinguished and defined
Tier 3: Domains of child functioning

The principal aim of the study is to evaluate the impact of training in FRAMEA and follow-up consultation on professional practice and on child developmental and mental health outcomes.  The evaluation is being carried out in three professional settings, namely Health Visiting, Children’s Social Care, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, in four geographical areas.

The research uses a multiple baseline, repeated measures design. Concerns about the care and wellbeing of children are coded according to the FRAMEA coding system, in a short, comprehensive instrument.  A coding system for service utilisation, based on the FRAMEA 4-tier model, has also been developed.

It is hypothesised that the FRAMEA training, with subsequent consultation, will assist professionals in working more systematically and with greater clarity in this difficult field.

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Preventing emotional and behavioural problems in adolescent girls in schools

Dr Nadia Micalli (Principal Investigator)
Megan Kash-MacDonald (Research Assistant)

Key collaborators:
Professor Ulrike Schmidt (IoP, KCL)

Funded by: tbc

We aim to develop and test a prevention programme to improve at-risk girls' social and emotional skills and prevent various problem behaviours.

Page last modified on 02 mar 12 10:16