Keun-Ah Cheon, MD, PhD


3535 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Suite 860, Office# 824
Philadelphia, PA 19104

267-426-4916

cheonk@email.chop.edu


I am a visiting scholar of the Developmental Neuroimaging Laboratory, the Center for Autism Research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I am also an associate professor in child psychiatric department and a director of Child and Mental Health Center at the Kwandong University MyongJi Hospital in South Korea. I have been interested in understanding the biological bases of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and using that knowledge to advance treatment.

For the last several years, I have been doing the research of genetic epidemiologic study of ASD in South Korea. As a part of and a consecutive study of the genetic study with Korean ASD, I have been performing the neuroimaging study in the children with ASD recruited by a community in Korea, which includes the structural and functional MRI (fMRI), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). I am especially interested in the social brain of the children with ASD and other child psychiatric illness like ADHD and using the fMRI to find out a specific abnormality in social brain network.

I graduated Yonsei University Medical School in Seoul, South Korea and have a Ph.D. in child psychiatric disorder, with a focus in family association genetic study of ADHD. I have been collaborating on the Genetic Epidemiological Study! of Korean ASD with Dr. Young-shin Kim and Dr. Matthew State at Yale University's Child Study Center.

As for my neuroimaging study background, I conducted a study, "The Effect of Haloperidol on Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Assessed with 99m-Tc-ECD SPECT in Schizophrenic Patients" as a Master's Thesis. I performed several studies using I-123N-(3-iodopropen-2-yl)-2beta-carbomethoxy-3beta-(4-chlorophenyl) tropane ([123I]IPT SPECT) in children with ADHD, Tourette disorder and Obsessive Convulsive disorder.

I am currently a member of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), international ADHD genetic network, International Society for Neuroimaging in Psychiatry (ISNIP) and Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum (CINP).

Publications

Cheon KA , Ryu YH, Namkoong K, Kim CH, Kim JJ, Lee JD. Dopamine Transporter Density of the Basal Ganglia Assessed with [123I]IPT SPECT in Drug-Naive Children with Tourette's Disorder. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. 2004. 130(1): 85-95.

Cheon KA, Cho DY, Koo MS, Song DH, Namkoong K. Association between homozygosity of G allele at Alpha-2a-Adrenergic Receptor Gene and Methylphenidate Response in Korean Children and Adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Biological Psychiatry. 2009. 65(7): 564-570.

Cheon KA, Kim BN, Cho SC. Association of 4-Repeat Allele of the Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene Exon III Polymorphism and Response to Methylphenidate Treatment in Korean ADHD Children. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2007. 32(6): 1377-83.

Cheon KA, Ryu YH, Kim YK, Namkoong K, Kim CH, Lee JD. Dopamine Transporter Density in the Basal Ganglia Assessed with [123I]IPT SPET in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular imaging. 2003. 30: 306-311.

Cheon KA, Ryu YH, Kim JW, Cho DY. The homozygosity for 10-repeat allele at dopamine transporter gene and dopamine transporter density in Korean children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Relating to treatment response to methylphenidate. European Neuropsychopharamcology. 2005. 15(1): 95-101.

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