Lily Smythe is a PhD student in the ReSpect Lab (joined 2024), supervised by Professor Francesca Happé, Professor Mark Edwards, and Dr Tim Nicholson. Her work is focussed on the co-occurrence of autism and Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a condition in which a person experiences neurological symptoms without the corresponding structural damage.

Her research adopts a mixed-methods design, drawing on both health record analysis and phenomenological interviews to investigate factors that might increase vulnerability to FND in autistic individuals. She is particularly interested in potential shared cognitive mechanisms- such as differences and difficulties in interoception, alexithymia, variations in attention, and differences in predictive processing.

Before starting her PhD, Lily studied Psychology at the University of Bristol (2016-2019), and a Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (2019-2020). Following this, she worked for two years for Ambitious About Autism as a teaching assistant and peer support worker. She then worked for two years at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health as a research assistant on a project assessing the cognitive impact of Duchenne and Becker Muscular Dystrophies.

Research interests

• Functional Neurological Disorder
• Autism
• Interoception
• Alexithymia