ABOUT

Dr Meng-Chuan Lai

I completed my first degree (Doctor of Medicine) in the National Taiwan University in 2002, then received postgraduate clinical training in both adult and child/adolescent psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and the Children's Mental Health Center, National Taiwan University Hospital. My clinical interests are in autism spectrum conditions (ASC), psychotic disorders, sexual identity developments, and adolescent psychotherapy.

My PhD study at the ARC, completed in 2011, focused on disentangling the complex relationship between biological sex and ASC at the cognitive and neuroimaging levels, using behavioural and cognitive tasks, conventional and novel (e.g. graph theoretical approach, complex science methods) neuroimaging analysis strategies. I also investigated social attitude/stereotype formation in people with ASC. My current research focuses on elucidating the heterogeneity of ASC by specifying and contrasting its various subgroups.

I initiated the Female AIMS (Autism Imaging Multicentre Study) project to complement the male AIMS study we previously conducted with MRC support.

Clinically I am an honorary consultant psychiatrist at the National Taiwan University Hospital.

In 2011 I was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by the Waterloo Foundation to investigate neural differences between Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism. I also receive supports from the Innovative Medicines Initiative EU-AIMS project to investigate biomarkers for autism.

Curriculum Vitae