Pediatrician; child- and adolescent psychiatrist. Scientific Interest:: children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Background:

MD 1981, Pediatrician 1989 and Child- and adolescent psychiatrist 1993. Senior consultant since 1993 at Child Habilitation Unit.

PhD-student at Regional Centre for Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare. Main scientific interest: ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorders.  

Increased focus on the autistic area and also a broadened understanding of the autistic spectrum makes the incidence of ASD rapidly growing. But research also points to a real increase in the occurrence of persons with these difficulties. At the same time we see that the comorbidity of ASD with other neuropsychiatric disorders is growing. Through many years of clinical experience, we know that problems in social interaction occurs frequently in all neuropsychiatry – only some of them fulfilling the diagnostic criteria for ASD. Can stratifying the social difficulties be helpful in our understanding of these and in this way be used in tailoring the interventions?

Research project:

My research project is to see if new investigation methods as EEG/ ERP can identify neurobiological markers correlating to the social deficiencies in neuropsychiatric disorders.

The research will approach this question through different pathways. I will register brain activity by using quantitative EEG and ERPs, Event Related Potentials. Recognition of emotions in others is a prerequisite for social competence and I will therefore use emotional faces as stimuli. I will also perform selected neuropsychological tasks and use questionnaires and by this try to identify subgroups of the social interaction problems in children with ASD and children with ADHD.

The aim of my study is to give a better understanding of the social difficulties and from this contribute to individualizing treatment and training.