Jonathan Delafield-Butt
About our researcher Jonathan Delafield-Butt
About Jonathan Delafield-Butt
Jonathan Delafield-Butt is Professor of Child Neurodevelopment and Autism and Director of the award-winning cross-disciplinary Laboratory for Innovation in Autism at the University of Strathclyde. His research and scholarship examine the origins of psychological experience, with attention to the early development of intentionality, and its contribution to embodied foundations of psychological development, learning, and health. He took his Ph.D. in Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, extended to Developmental Psychology with application of intersubjectivity theory in postdoctoral work at Edinburgh and Copenhagen, and held scholarships at Harvard and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Edinburgh for science-philosophy bridgework on the nature of mind and body. Delafield-Butt trained pre-clinically in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Scottish Institute for Human Relations, is a member of the International Society for Autism Research, American Psychological Association, World Association for Infant Mental Health, and the Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Centre.
Laboratory for Innovation in Autism
Research interests
Delafield-Butt’s research focusses on the role of intentional movement as a quintessential aspect of the embodied mind, essential in psychological development. Bringing together expertise in Engineering, Psychology, Psychiatry and Education, his multidisciplinary team at the Laboratory for Innovation in Autism works to characterise and map a subtle, but significant motor disruption in children with autism that thwarts intentional movement and disrupts typical psychological development. Computational characterisation of this ‘autism motor signature’ enables new methods in serious game assessment technology with artificial intelligence analytics for accessible, fun, and scalable screening and diagnosis.
The motor disruption in autism presents new insight into the role of movement in psychological development, and raises the importance of the brainstem as its principal neurological substrate. Delafield-Butt is engaged in mapping this neural substrate with anatomic 3T and 7T MRI neuroimaging in collaborative work with Pisa, Glasgow and USC, and in computational analysis of its subsecond motor activity in early human development, and its evolution in our non-human primate cousins (macaque and chimpanzee), in collaborative work with Linköping and Kyoto.
By better understanding the role of movement in psychological development and health, we can better produce tools to assess for neurodevelopmental differences, and inform therapy and care.
Funding
Jonathan has received funding for her research from
- Economic and Social Research Council, UK Research and Innovation
- Swedish Research Council
- European Union
- Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science
- Hawthorne Philanthropy
- SINAPSE
- Scottish Government
