Matthew Belmonte is a reader in psychology at Nottingham Trent University who researches the behavior and neurophysiology of autistic individuals.
[2] Belmonte has received a $700,000 National Science Foundation grant to study this aspect, and uses MRI and EEG technology to measure brain activity of autistic and non-autistic individuals.
[3] In his essay 'Life Without Order: Literature, Psychology, and Autism', Belmonte stated that he was inspired to pursue a career in science because of his need for a single right answer.
[4] Belmonte stated that repetitive behaviors of autistic people are usually associated with nonsocial phenomena as a protection against chaos, claiming that weakened neural connectivity interferes with narrative linkage.
[9] Dr. James T. Todd, a professor of psychology, has criticized Belmonte for believing that Tito Mukhopadhyay, a non-verbal autistic individual, can independently write as Belmonte did not explain why the lack of someone touching Tito while writing guarantees authorship, and that simply using a keyboard at a basic level is not difficult.