Loren Martin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Undergraduate Psychology
April is Autism Awareness month, and Loren Martin, Ph.D., has dedicated much of his life to the study of the brain and how it relates to autism. He became fascinated by the workings of the human brain during his undergraduate years at Olivet Nazarene University when he had the opportunity to work as a student therapist for a three-year-old boy with autism.
“I began working with him as a sophomore psychology major and soon realized that I was very intrigued by the mystery surrounding this disorder,” said Martin, now an assistant professor in APU’s Department of Psychology. “It was at this time that I decided to pursue a career in neuroscience, focusing on the biological underpinnings of autism.”
During his time at the University of Tennessee’s graduate school, Martin’s research consisted of studying and manipulating the effects of autism on mice. After joining the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis for a postdoctoral fellowship, he performed the same experiment on rhesus monkeys, whose DNA are 90 percent identical to humans. His findings revealed that a mother’s IgG antibodies could be attacking the developing fetus’ brain.
Martin’s study of autism now continues at APU through the university’s new Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute. “At the Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute, we are beginning a study to characterize the neuropsychological profile of children with autism using the NEPSY-II,” Martin said. “Through this research, we hope to find relationships between autism severity and cognitive skills that have not yet been identified.”
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