Education: Reasearch - Forget ivory towers: today, team work is vital

The key word for researchers is now collaboration, says Philip Schofield. He looks at advances in the study of autism

Little university research today is carried out by lone figures seeking new insights from isolated corners of laboratories or libraries. Usually it involves not only working with departmental colleagues, but often with people in other disciplines, and sometimes with researchers in other universities.

Research into the "theory of mind" being carried out at University College London, rated one of the top three multifaculty universities for the quality of its research, is a good example of this collaborative approach.

The "theory of mind" is used to describe the intuitive psychology which enables people to gain insights into why others behave as they do. We have to consider what other people may be thinking if we are to develop normal social relationships. The research seeks to understanding this process.

Because autistic people lack this ability, one element of the research has been to study autism. As Professor Uta Frith, of the Medical Research Council Cognitive Development Unit in UCL's Department of Psychology, explains: "Autism plays a really pivotal role in all this research because if it were not for this strange condition, we probably would never have thought of looking for a `brain basis' for such a very complex function as a `theory of mind'."

She says this ability was thought to go hand in hand with development. "But in the case of autism you could see that this particular ability might be absent while at the same time they might have remarkably high cognitive abilities."

Professor Frith's team, working with UCL's Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, scanned the brain activity of people while they read two kinds of story - one requiring them to think about the characters' mental states and the other about the physical state of the scenes described. She says: "Normal people find both types of stories simple to understand. But the comparison of the brain activity showed that different brain processes were used to understand these two types of stories.

"A specific spot within the brain - the medial part of the left prefrontal cortex - was strongly activated when normal individuals read the `theory of mind' stories. But autistic people failed to activate the same area."

The study identified a key component of the `theory of mind'. But this was only a first step. "It is no doubt a small part of a larger system," says Professor Frith. "The next stage is to identify the other components of the system and the precise role that each plays in autistic as well as in ordinary people."

The team has moved on to a similar study using non-verbal animations, each lasting 30 seconds, in which two coloured triangles interact with one another. There are three types of scenario. In one, the shapes move at random. In another, they appear to move with clear intent. And in the last they seem to be chasing each other, but without any clear motive. "Ordinary people are very sensitive to the differences I've described ... and give very clear distinctions," says Professor Frith. "But showing exactly the same things to people with autism, some with quite high ability, we found that they were much less able to differentiate between these three stories."

There is also a lot of interest in the genetics of autism. This is the subject of a major research project being coordinated by the MRC Child Psychiatry Unit at King's College Institute of Psychiatry, in collaboration with Oxford and other researchers in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Although Professor Frith is not directly involved in this project, her work is feeding in to it. "I'm trying to diagnose, to actually define, what is the phenotype, by as sensitive a means as possible. It is not easy to say who is and is not affected because we have all these different variants. For genetic research it is absolutely crucial that you know which members of a family are affected, even to a very mild degree."

She suggests that the study of autism casts light on the origins of consciousness and self-consciousness. "Using the model of autism we can gain ideas of what consciousness might be like in individuals who have very different ways of thinking about their own and other people's intentions and psychological motivations."

The collaboration between departments has been helped by the newly founded interdisciplinary Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. Professor Frith describes it as "one of those virtual institutes that exists because people across the disciplines really want to meet each other and work together". She says they have "constant meetings, workshops, seminars, and lectures from distinguished speakers from all over the world to talk about topics which really involve the brain as much as the mind".

She argues that cognitive neuroscience exists only because it is interdisciplinary. Nor is it a pure science. "It is also philosophy and linguistics. So we have seminars on language and consciousness and we specifically make sure that linguists and philosophers will come and talk to us."

To succeed in today's research environment, it is clear that one needs skills not normally associated with researchers: to be a good team worker with strong interpersonal skills. It is these skills, employers say, that are in very short supply.