Sonia Gray
speaker
779 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 22 May
Sonia Gray’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.
Appearances
No Such Thing as Normal · 33. What can science tell us about neurodivergent brains? · 1 May 2026
podcast
Well, maybe it's because we always want black and white answers.
And what I've realised, particularly doing work in this field of neurodiversity, is there often isn't one answer, is there?
When you're talking about the brain, for example, with ADHD, yes, it's about dopamine, but it's also about all these other factors.
And it's about the interplay of everything, which blows my mind a little bit because we just want simple answers to as you'd get maybe in a physical, you know, a blood test or something.
We've known since the 1970s that autism has a large genetic component, but being able to pinpoint an exact biological pathway for an individual or whānau, that is fairly recent.
But that's what a team at the Centre for Brain Research at Auckland Uni are doing.
Dr Jessie Jacobson heads the team, and they're working to understand the genetic basis of autism.
And the kaupapa here is really important.
This is not in any way about solving, changing or curing, but about giving more precise and refined answers that go beyond an observational assessment.
It's an opportunity to improve someone's quality of life.
To understand more, I sat down with Jessie and with the autistic advisor on the project, Dr Ruth Monk,
Ruth Monk is the autistic advisor on this project and is also an accomplished medical researcher.
Ruth says having these definitive answers goes beyond just helping with diagnosis and support.
In many cases, it's personal.
The way it works is Jessie and her team take a sample of an individual's DNA and look for changes in genes they know are associated with autism.
And sometimes not only do they get clarity, they get connection.
So is what you're saying, this is fascinating to me, but I might have it wrong, that you can identify changes in a specific gene, that individual or family can find other people with
that same change and they're likely to have similar experiences or presentations or there's, yeah?
Were the genes already identified or was that part of your work?
So, I mean, I don't know if this is the right thing to ask or not.
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