Gabriel Dichter, Associate Director for Research at the CIDD, has been awarded an exploratory grant from NICHD to study linkages between brain functioning and the immune system in autism. The project builds on pilot data collected by Kaitlin Cummings, a clinical psychology graduate student in Dichter’s lab. In addition to Cummings, collaborators on the project include Keely Muscatell (Psychology and Neuroscience), Alana Campbell (Psychiatry), Kinh Truong (Biostatistics), Katherine Meltzoff (UC-Riverside), and Bennett Wood, MSW, a neurodivergent practitioner and former UNC LEND trainee. The project will use the EEG resources of the UNC Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center.
It has long been recognized that individuals with autism are characterized by differences in how the brain processes social rewards. Additionally, several avenues of research indicate that autism is characterized by heightened inflammatory responses. Research by Muscatell has shown that inflammation, the body’s response to physical and psychosocial stressors, impacts social behavior as well as brain circuits that process rewarding information. The goal of this new project is to see if brain function, measured with EEG during social reward processing, is associated with measures of inflammation derived from an analysis of blood levels of inflammatory cytokines in autistic individuals, and how these impact social functioning and quality of life. Additionally, because a portion of study participants have participated in a companion PET study at UNC, supported by a Neurospark Award from the UNC Neuroscience Center, the project will also investigate the correspondence between EEG, blood-based markers of inflammation, and PET measures of neuroinflammation.