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In particular, what we know about early intervention is that it often has the largest benefits

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of most impact on children from vulnerable backgrounds.

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That's where we actually see the largest gains and differences.

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The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe, and we are in the middle

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of a scientific revolution to understand its inner workings.

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Join us for a conversation with world-renowned neuroscientists as they visit Rochester.

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I am Dr. John Foxe, Director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University

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of Rochester, and you are listening to Neuroscience Perspectives.

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I have a fantastic guest here today, Professor Brian Boyd from the University of North Carolina.

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Brian is a researcher in the domain of developmental disabilities, very specifically focused on

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autism with a background in special education.

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We're going to dive into that with Brian momentarily.

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He's been dedicated to bringing solutions to the classroom and early intervention in

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autism and in recent times has very specifically turned to dealing with this in underrepresented

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and marginalized communities in the black community.

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Brian is, and he has a long title, he is the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor

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of Education and he's the Interim Director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development

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Institute at the University of North Carolina.

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Brian it's really fantastic to have you here in Rochester.

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We want to dive in, get to know you a little bit.

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Actually before we get into the science and we get into developmental disabilities, tell

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us a little bit about growing up, how did you end up, where did you go to school and

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all the rest of it, what were the motivations in life?

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Sure, thank you.

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Well first of all John, it's wonderful to be here, so thank you for having me.

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So I grew up in a very small town in Virginia, population of less than a thousand, so it's

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rural Virginia.

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For those who know Virginia, it's really split between southern Virginia and northern Virginia

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and the northerners don't really claim the state the same way because they consider themselves

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sort of part of Maryland and DC in that sort of area.

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But I grew up, my grandparents had operated a farm really, so I grew up in a farm, a small

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farm town really.

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In that small town, I had, it was real sense of community and that sense of community really

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sort of inspired me to think about sort of my own education and the opportunities that

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I wanted to avail myself of.

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It was a very supportive community in many ways because it was such a small town and

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all of us knew each other.

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I was a first generation college student when I went off to college.

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I went to, did my undergraduate at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

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Jefferson's University?

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Yes, yes it is, Jefferson's University.

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The oldest university, like they say in the US.

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And there I sort of started down this pathway of autism at the College of William & Mary.

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From there, after I graduated, I worked for a little bit at the Teach Autism program in

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the state of North Carolina.

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So that gave me certainly much more of an introduction to autism and autism research.

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And then sort of because of some people I met there, I was inspired to continue my studies

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and go on to graduate school.

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Then did a master's of education at the University of Virginia and ultimately my PhD in special

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education at the University of Florida.

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So that's sort of my pathway, if you will.

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And then I ended up back in Chapel Hill for a postdoc at UNC Chapel Hill.

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Right, right.

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And you know, I mean, you came from a farming community, a small town, not an academic background,

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is that true to say?

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And I mean, when you were making this jump to really the highest levels of education,

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was that new for your family and your community?

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Was that a thing for you?

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It was certainly new for my family, yes.

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Like I said, neither of my parents went to college.

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So I was a first generation college student.

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So that experience was new for my immediate family.

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I had extended family members that had gone to university and gone to college, but not

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in my immediate family.

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So navigating that was a journey.

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But I think part of what I really had were just two supportive parents who were there

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and willing to help me navigate this sort of novel situation that they had no experience

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with, but they were there to listen.

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And when I had issues or problems arise.

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So I think just knowing that they were supportive of what I was trying to do really meant a

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lot and sort of inspired me to continue.

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Right, right.

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And then how early would you have had this sort of thought, I want to be in education

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and specifically, you know, kids who are not neurotypical, who are struggling?

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Yeah.

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I'm not sure when I was in high school, again, this was a very small town, that I interacted

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with a lot of students with disabilities.

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At the time I was in school, school was pretty segregated.

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The students with disabilities that did exist, existed in totally separate classrooms.

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I don't remember any students being included.

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No mainstreaming.

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Yeah.

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At least in my school.

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This was a small school with not a ton of students.

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And almost all of them, I do believe, rode sort of separate buses.

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So there was almost separation between us who were neurotypical and students with disabilities.

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So it really wasn't until I got to college, and I was actually doing some undergraduate

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research with a social psychology professor, but this was in the days before computers

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were plentiful and we used to print out data and check things line by line.

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I was like, oh my gosh.

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This is the most tedious job ever.

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I don't want to spend my entire summer doing this.

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And I had taken what was then called abnormal psychology and abnormal psychology course.

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And in the textbook, there was really literally no more than a paragraph about autism.

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And this was the late 90s.

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But something about that paragraph sort of stuck out to me.

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And I really can't explain what it was.

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But I ended up searching online, however, we searched before Google.

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And what popped up, likely because of proximity of the state of North Carolina to the state

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of Virginia, was a camp called Camp Royal that's located in Pittsburgh, North Carolina.

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And I decided to apply there to become a camp counselor.

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And most of us who were camp counselors were undergraduate college students.

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For many of us, it was our first exposure that we knew of to autism.

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But it was 10 weeks of working with autistic individuals of varying ages, varying support

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needs, varying ability levels.

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And it was that experience that really led me to continue in the field.

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Right.

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Was there something specific about interacting with kids with autism?

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Talk to me about that human to human interaction.

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Is there something there that really just gets you going?

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Is that the thing?

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Yeah.

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I think it was.

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I mean, what led me into, I mean, there really is, what led me into special education specifically

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was after I finished up at the camp, at that camp, at Camp Royal, what used to happen was

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almost on a weekly basis, clinical psychology interns who worked at the Teach program will

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come out and support us sort of novice camp counselors.

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And I was talking to one of them and said, I think I want to continue in autism.

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I'll be graduating soon.

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Do you have any recommendations?

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And the person said, I suggest you contact Gary Mezoboff, who at the time was the director

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of the Teach autism program.

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I had no idea who Gary Mezoboff was, but I cold called him.

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And for some reason, Gary Mezoboff called me back.

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And to make it a shorter story, he offered me a job at the Teach autism program.

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One of the things I got to do was work in a classroom for preschool aged children.

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And at the time, we also started a program for newly diagnosed two year olds.

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And again, this is the late nineties when we weren't diagnosing as many two year olds

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with autism.

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And in that program, I had this wonderful experiences, interactions with young children,

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and their parents, and hearing their stories, right?

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And just seeing the growth, like what transpired in such a short amount of time, the transformations

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I saw in those kids, just by, this was really three or four hours of exposure to a classroom

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a day.

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But it was really wonderful experiences.

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And actually one of the kids who was in that two year old program recently had some contact

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with his dad, and he's now a college student, and he's majoring in jazz.

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He's becoming a jazz musician.

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So just those kinds of stories and interactions are just sort of really sustain you in many

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ways.

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I do think you see parents interacting with kids, parents love their kids, but neurotypical

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folks, they're going about their day.

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But when you see parents interacting with a child with a developmental disability, you

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see love in the moment right there.

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There's something very inspiring about that, I think, for people who work in our field.

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I was constantly reminding you while you're here.

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Now that brings me to something, you've chosen really to be at the inter bench, the pointy

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end of the system, right?

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I need to deliver solutions for people.

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Tell us about that.

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And what's effective?

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Where do you see the grist in the middle here?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And actually that, to some degree, started my...that inspiration also started during

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that time in the Teach Autism program because we were in the classroom.

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And there was a period of time where we didn't have a full time teacher.

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And at that time I did not have a teaching license.

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I hadn't received my masters of education yet.

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So they brought in someone who was a former teacher but currently completing her doctoral

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studies in special education at UNC Chapel Hill.

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And this person worked in the classroom.

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And part of what I saw her do with kids and how she applied what she was learning within

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her PhD program to the work she was doing with children sort of inspired me to continue

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and to move into the education realm.

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And so really that intervention research, I just had so many questions as a result of

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that experience.

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Why did some kids improve so much?

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How do we help most kids gain the maximal benefit?

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And I was exposed to different intervention programs.

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I did teach for a while.

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I did applied behavior analysis.

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I got exposed to floor time.

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A number of us in the field know there was a recent paper by Amy Weatherby and others

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showing that early intervention does have a difference.

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There is something related to timing of exposure to intervention that can make a difference

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for outcomes.

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But I think we know that more broadly to some degree in the field that early intervention

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matters.

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When you introduced me, you talked about that I'm interim director at the Frank Portogram

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Child Development Institute.

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And that institute is really famous for a landmark study that was done in the US called

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the Apisodarian study.

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And that study was started in the 1970s where it was a randomized control trial where children

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living in poverty were randomized to receive high quality classroom based intervention

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or usual services.

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Those folks have been followed now into adulthood and they continue to have better outcomes,

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health outcomes, employment outcomes, less contact with the criminal justice system all

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because it seems of exposure to high quality early intervention and early development.

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So we know that early intervention can have long term positive outcomes, profound positive

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outcomes.

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And in particular what we know about early intervention is that it often has the largest

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benefits of most impact on children from vulnerable backgrounds.

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That's where we actually see the largest gains and differences.

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So obviously students with disabilities, autistic students are a vulnerable group.

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And we can think about them in that space of how we sort of maximize their development

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early in life to achieve the best gains later in life.

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But the second part of your question is I think we're still unpacking autism.

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It is heterogeneous and we certainly deal with that on an intervention side of things

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as well.

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How do we think about sort of what baseline characteristics of children sort of moderate

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intervention, their response to intervention?

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And I think we're still sorting that out to some degree.

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I think we certainly know that children who have co-occurring intellectual disability

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often have a different response than students who don't have a co-occurring intellectual

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disability.

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And where I've been going in my research is then what does it mean for students who are

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from racially minoritized backgrounds?

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What is their intervention response?

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And should we be thinking more about culturally tailoring of our interventions as a result?

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And so I do think we're trying to move to this place of how do we best stratify and

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maybe we need a combination of not just behavioral factors but biological factors that may better

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help us figure out who will respond to which intervention.

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I think we're still moving in that direction to some degree.

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We're in a strange time in American political history.

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We're in a time where there's a movement to say we shouldn't be classifying anybody according

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to race.

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Those days are over.

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Does this worry you?

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Obviously, from a science perspective, you can add high vulnerability to racially marginalized

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underrepresented groups.

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Are you worried about this?

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I don't want to get you deep into the politics.

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I know you're a scientist.

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How does that play into your thinking these days?

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I mean, yes, it's worrisome to some degree.

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As we all know, race is a social construct.

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There's really no biological basis for race itself.

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But I wish that we were all starting at a place of equality, that all racial groups

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were treated the same.

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We know that is not the case.

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But we also know that the driver of disparity is not race but underlying racism and that

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how racial groups are treated differently as a result of physical characteristics, in

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this case, the color of their skin.

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If we can get to a place of equality in this country, then I think we can have some different

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discussions about race.

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But until we solve the underlying issues of racism that are driving the disparities we're

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seeing in various communities across various outcomes, then I think we still have some

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work to do.

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And as we all know, this issue of equity that people are talking about, while it may seem

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like a scary word or buzzword, as we ultimately know, it's really just a concept of fairness,

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providing people what they need, of really tailoring things to people.

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Because not everyone needs the same.

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It shouldn't be controversial because we know that not everyone needs the same thing.

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And so now we're just talking about that within the context of really social classes and societal

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hierarchies.

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Some groups are treated differently because of different reasons.

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And so how do we provide those groups what they need?

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So I hope we can have some more balanced conversations because I think these conversations benefit

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all children and all of us as a society if we can think about issues of fairness.

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Sorry to drag you into political space, but I really appreciate your answer there.

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And I appreciate the work that you're doing with youngsters.

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You're really in the trenches, you're up to your elbows in trying to bring solutions,

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bring a better life, allow kids to live the best possible life.

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And I just think, what could be better than that?

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I think all of us in the neurosciences are proud of you and proud of what you do.

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Let me ask you one last question.

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I always ask this question.

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You've had an amazing life, really.

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You've reached the absolute pinnacle of the academy from a small town in Virginia.

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When you talk to your graduate students or youngsters in the schools, they say, how do

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I do it?

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How do I do what Brian Boyd did?

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Do you have some pearls of wisdom for them?

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Is there advice for them?

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I guess two pieces of advice.

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For me, and I think for other people in the field that I've interacted with as well, mentors

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are really important.

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Find your supportive mentoring network, and sometimes you need mentors for different reasons.

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Sometimes it's not just about the science.

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Sometimes it's just about navigating academia.

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When I was in my doctoral program, one of my mentors was a Latina woman.

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And I talked to her about what it's like being a minority in the academy.

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And those are the conversations we had.

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But they were really important for my career.

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So find your mentoring network, that support.

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The other I would say to people, and I often hear this from students who are from marginalized

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backgrounds, this whole concept of imposter syndrome.

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And I feel like an imposter.

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And I would say that, again, most people I've talked to in the academy, at some point in

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their career, felt like an imposter.

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So know that you've been invited into that room for a reason.

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So just show up and be your authentic self.

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So those are my two pieces of advice.

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Brian, such a pleasure to have you here.

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Thanks very much.

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Oh, thank you, John.

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Thank you very much.