Name
Chantal Kemner
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Section Psychopathology of developmental disorders
Function Professor
E-mail:
ckemner@umcutrecht.nl Telephone number: +31 88 75 57462
Title research line
Perception and social processing
Summary research The main theme of my research of the past five years has been the role of low-level, perceptual factors in the processing of social stimuli, especially in relation to autism. Several studies focused on the brain activity elicited by the processing of details and coarse stimulus features in neutral stimuli and faces. We found compelling evidence for abnormalities in both behaviour and brain activity in response to these stimulus features in autism. In addition, we found evidence that this abnormal activity reflects abnormal connectivity, especially involving lateral interactions. A second series of studies focused on several issues in face and emotion processing. My research group showed that emotion expressed in the face and the body is reflected in the facial EMG, both in controls and autistic subjects. We also found that gaze patterns to faces and emotions, recognition of emotions, and attentional shifting to eye cues are normal in autism. However, there are indications for an abnormal integration of emotional expression cues in reflexive orienting, which may be related to increased detail processing. Of specific interest was whether there are abnormalities in audio-visual integration in autistic subjects. We found no abnormalities in low-level audiovisual integration. However, we also showed that audiovisual integration related to emotion processing might be abnormal in this group.
A second research line investigated the relation between schizophrenia and autism, since the existence of several subgroups in the autistic spectrum with an increased risk of psychosis indicates that there might be a common aetiological factor in autism and schizophrenia. Several studies of classical (psychophysiological) marker tasks for schizophrenia in relation to psychosis and autism have been performed. Current studies focus on the relation between clinical symptoms in autism and schizophrenia and parameters in these marker tasks and perceptual processing in schizophrenia.
Publications Boeschoten MA, Kenemans JL, Engeland HV, Kemner C (2007). Abnormal spatial frequency processing in high-functioning children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD). Clin Neurophysiol, 118, 2076-2088.
de Jong MC, van Engeland H, Kemner C (2008). Attentional effects of gaze shifts are influenced by emotion and spatial frequency, but not in autism. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 47, 443-454.
Kemner C, Lamme VA, Kovacs I, van Engeland H (2007). Integrity of lateral and feedbackward connections in visual processing in children with pervasive developmental disorder. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1293-1298.
Magnée MJCM, de Gelder B, van Engeland H, Kemner C (2007). Facial electromyographic responses to emotional information from faces and voices in individuals with Pervasive Developmental Disorder. JCPP, 48, 1122-1130.
Vandenbroucke MW, Scholte HS, Engeland HV, Lamme VA, Kemner C (2008). A neural substrate for atypical low-level visual processing in autism spectrum disorder. Brain, 131, 1013-1024.
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