Sheffield Autism Research Lab
The goal of the Autism Research Lab at Sheffield is to investigate brain, behaviour and cognition in individuals with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) such as autism and Asperger's disorder. By using techniques including psychometric assessments, visual psychophysics, computer based reaction time paradigms, eye-tracking, and EEG, we aim to further the understanding of the neural underpinnings of atypical behaviour and cognition in autism and Asperger's syndrome. Our long-term goal is to identify particular neural signatures that will prove useful in aiding the diagnosis of ASD – by enabling earlier diagnosis (in younger children) and by defining the biological basis of particular clusters of symptoms.
More information about our research is given here. Please contact Elizabeth Milne if you would like more details about any of this work.
Lab News
May: Megan and Steph are attending the International Meeting for Autism Research in San Sebastian this week. Megan will be presenting a poster detailing her recent work on the expression of autistic traits across cultures.
Abby will be presenting a poster entitled "An Investigation into the Boundary Conditions of Optimal Decision Making" at the forthcoming Experimental Psychology Society Meeting in Lancaster, April 10 - 12th.
Megan will be presenting some of her recent work at the University of Dundee on the 4th April and at Newcastle University on 24th April. The title of the talk will be "Taking a look at social attention: Insights from the broader autism phenotype"
Liz is giving talks at the University of Sussex on the 7th February and at UCL on 25th February. For more details, please get in touch.
January 2013: Read Megan's comments about eye-gaze in individuals with autism and William's syndrome in an interesting article in the on-line science magazine, Elements.
January 2013: Great news! Megan has been awarded a small grant from the Experimental Psychology Society to fund her work on gaze following in the broader autism phenotype. Congratulations Megan.
Megan will be giving a talk at the British Ocular Motor Group meeting at Kingston University on 17th December. The title of the talk is "What affects social attention? Social presence, eye contact and autistic traits".
November 2012: Liz will be participating in the AWARES on-line conference on autism. For more details see here.
November 16th: Liz will be giving a Zangwill seminar at the University of Cambridge.November: Megan is offering a PhD on Attention in Real Life Interactions. Information on funding is available on the departmental website.
November: Rebecca Wheeler is joining us to work as a part-time research assistant. She will be working with Megan on a project entitled “Using social cues in the real world”. Welcome Rebecca!
October 2012: Good news! One of the grants on which Liz is a co-applicant has been awarded. This is a BBSRC funded project on which Dr Ying Zheng is the principle investigator. This work will look at neural excitation and inhibition and how this can be modelled from the EEG signal. This work has significant implications for autism - congratulations Ying!
October 2012: Jen, Holly & Luisa have started collecting data for the heterogeneity in ASD project. Good luck you three!.
October 2012: Abigail Dickinson has joined the lab as a PhD student. Abby will be working on perceptual discrimination. Good luck Abby!
October 2012: We have a new cohort of undergraduate students working with us this year. Stephanie Dunn is working hard to train them in the use of EEG and provide a good background to perception and attention in ASD. Good luck Steph!