MSU professor uses MRIs for children’s autism research

Brain scanning technology is helping an MSU professor study autism, aiding efforts toward MSU’s goal of becoming a national center of autism research.

Margaret Semrud-Clikeman, a psychology professor and director of MSU’s Center for Neurodevelopmental Study, uses MRIs to study how the brain processes social situations in children with autism.

“Our question is: What’s breaking down?” she said. “Where is it in the brain that’s not working?”

Semrud-Clikeman said her research is funded separately from the $2.1 million autism research grant MSU received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last Friday. She said the money for her research comes from a private benefactor who asked to remain anonymous.

“While (the grant) won’t directly impact us, the knowledge that they get is going to be extremely invaluable,” she said.

Semrud-Clikeman said children with autism try to use the left side of their brains to talk themselves through social situations.

“For most of us, when we look at a social situation, our right (brain) hemisphere lights up,” she said.

Semrud-Clikeman said she came to MSU from the University of Texas at Austin three years ago because of the MRI facilities and personnel.

Radiology Department Chairman E. James Potchen said the department donated the use of its machines for the study.

He said an MRI normally costs $700 to $1,000, depending on what the researcher wants to do.

“We’re so eager for MSU to become a major (autism) research center,” he said.

Semrud-Clikeman said the researchers start by testing participants’ language abilities and asking them to talk about videos of social situations they are shown. One typical situation shows a child pretending to like a present she received. People with autism typically won’t be able to interpret facial expressions and deduce that the child didn’t like the present, she said.

“These kids really do want friends and it’s really hard for them,” she said. “Their levels of anxiety and depression are quite high.”

Jesse Bledsoe, a graduate student who works with Semrud-Clikeman, said the project also looks for structural abnormalities in the children’s brains. He said nonverbal learning disorder was particularly interesting for research, because it may be part of the autism spectrum, but the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has not recognized and defined it.

“Years ago, autism wasn’t recognized, (but) people started to notice patterns,” he said. “Autism is really a spectrum and Asperger’s (syndrome) is underneath that.”