Evo Terra (Host): It's always good to get to know the person behind the doctor. So we're excited to get to know Dr. Tanjala Gipson, the Director of the TSC Associated Neuropsychiatric Disorders Clinic at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. I'm Evo Terra, Dr. Gipson. Welcome.

Tanjala Gipson, MD: Thank you Evo. Grateful to be here today.. 

Host: So let's start at the beginning, why did you choose to go into medicine?

Tanjala Gipson, MD: I chose to go into medicine because as a little girl, just seeing my pediatrician, I always had a great relationship with my pediatrician and, and I was like, well, I, really would love to help people, and decided to specialize because I have two sons with autism. So that was the turning point for the focus of my career. 

Host: Is there a certain particular aspect of autism that you are studying specifically?

Tanjala Gipson, MD: Yeah, actually, the way I got started was just having my sons and living in Louisiana, it was hard get evaluations,and help for them. I didn't really know what was going on and I thought to myself like, wow, there must be specialists out there who can help with this. And I found those specialists and found a way to train with them. And in autism particularly, I'm studying early vocal development right now. 

Host: Okay. Got it. Talk to me a little bit about your care and treatment philosophy. I know that dealing with autistic children and adults, things are definitely different. So how is your approach different from the others possibly?  

Tanjala Gipson, MD: I take a comprehensive approach. I treat children and adults, with all levels of autism, and I see each person as unique. Families with autism will say, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. So some people come in and they may have difficulties with social engagement or communication.

Other people may have severe behaviors. But for each family, we try to figure out like what is their unique circumstance? What are the opportunities and challenges they're facing, and how can we come alongside them and help?

Host: And tell me a little bit about the work you do there at the clinic that I'm not going to try to pronounce again.

Tanjala Gipson, MD: Yes. So in my clinic I see children and adults with a genetic condition called Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, and it's one of the leading genetic causes of autism. And so we see them as a part of our overall tuberous sclerosis Center of Excellence, and we see them every week. And our goal is to understand not just their condition, but who they are as people, and how we can help this. 

Host: Excellent. Now, before we got on the air together, you were talking to me a little bit about your research that you have done, and we don't get a chance to talk to doctors about the research that they've done as well quite often. So I'll let you expand on that. What's interesting there  

Tanjala Gipson, MD: Yeah, so in the research with tuberous sclerosis, so TSC, this one, genetic condition, one thing that I noticed as a physician is I would see patients come in, again, I see them from birth through adulthood, and some patients, are pretty high functioning. Like they can talk, they can do things for themselves. They're very capable. They may have families and they may struggle with things like anxiety, ADHD, subtle language things. But then there are other individuals who can have pretty severe autism with the same genetic condition. And it bothered me because somebody comes in with a baby with TSC and they say, well, Dr. Gipson, is my baby gonna have autism? Or is my baby gonna live a pretty typical life? And I always had to say, I don't know. And that's just, I don't like that. And so, answering a question that I couldn't answer was kind of the impetus for the research. And so what I found is I found a colleague, Dr. Oler, who studies early vocal development and in his research he's found that early vocal development can predict who might go on to develop autism. So now that's what we're doing in Tuberous Sclerosis. In the first three years of life, we have a study called Baby Talk, and we can analyze how these babies are making sounds and see if we can use that to predict outcomes so that we can intervene earlier.

And when these moms come in and say. Which way is my baby gonna go? I can say I don't know, but I have a method that may help us find out. 

Host: Right. And I'm assuming that method goes well beyond just at what age does your child begin speaking? Yes.

Tanjala Gipson, MD: Absolutely. There are so many different levels that I was not aware of until I started this research. Even the first six months of life babies can make certain vowel consonant sounds like how they form the syllables. How many times. They make long vowel sounds, then, when they get older, how they learn words.

So all of the nuances of language, those things that we don't normally check for is the basis of our research program. 

Host: Well, that certainly sounds fascinating. And is that research you're doing at, Le Bonheur Children's Hospital?

Tanjala Gipson, MD: It is, I'm doing it at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in collaboration with University of Memphis and we're funded by the National Institutes of Health. So I'm very grateful for that. 

Host: Outstanding and the research is ongoing?

Tanjala Gipson, MD: The research is ongoing. We're actually recruiting babies for our study now. 

Host: Wonderful. Well, let's get back to you for just a moment here. You're at Le Bonheur. It's a great hospital. What do you particularly like about being with the organization?

Tanjala Gipson, MD: What I love about being at Le Bonheur is the opportunity to engage with people across disciplines. Because I see patients who can be impacted, patients with TSC can be impacted in so many different ways. I have an opportunity to interact with our nephrologist and the dermatologist and ophthalmologist and the neuroradiologist and the epileptologist.

We have lots of ologists, but we get to all interact together as a team in the best interest of the patient. And I feel like that's one of the things that we do really well is team collaboration. 

Host: That's wonderful. You told us a little bit about your family. You've said you have two kids with autism. Is that the sum total of your family?

Tanjala Gipson, MD: No I have four sons total. The two with autism are number two and number four.

Host: Let me ask you a question that's sometimes a little bit esoteric, but I'll do this one. So you've been practicing medicine for a while now. You've got a house full of children and you, it seems like; what advice might you give to your younger self if you could do that? 

Tanjala Gipson, MD: If I gave advice to my younger self, I think I would say to my younger self, slow down. Slow down a bit. Enjoy more, rest more. Because sometimes becoming a physician, the pace of it, the medical school and residency, it all moves so quickly and I know that that's a fact. However, I would be more intentional about taking those moments to enjoy things that you won't get to revisit again.

Host: Yeah. It doesn't all have to be constant rat race nonstop. You gotta take time to enjoy life. And especially when you have four boys and you have no time to enjoy life because you're dealing with four boys. 

Well, Dr. Gipson, I've certainly enjoyed getting to know you a little bit better. Thank you very much for your time.

Tanjala Gipson, MD: Thank you, Evo. It's a pleasure.

Host: And for more information on Dr. Tanjala Gipson and her work at the TSC Associated Neuropsychiatric Disorders Clinic at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, please visit LeBonheur.org. You can also visit LeBonheur.org/podcast to view our full library of podcast episodes.

I'm Evo Terra. Thanks for listening.