Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Birth weight (BW) at delivery is an important developmental milestone indicative of prenatal conditions and portends of the postnatal growth trajectory that will occur during infancy and childhood. Previous research has documented that there are also many physiological and health consequences of being born either small-for-gestational age (SGA) or large-for-gestational age (LGA).
Adults with Down syndrome (DS) are predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and a characterization of glucose metabolism change throughout AD progression has yet to be performed in this population. Using FDG PET, regional glucose metabolism was evaluated across groups of cognitively stable DS (CS-DS), DS with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease (MCI-DS/AD), and healthy non-DS sibling controls.
A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is part of a new multi-institution effort to better understand Alzheimer’s disease in adults with Down syndrome. Adults with Down syndrome are at high risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease beginning in their late 40s, because of their unique biology. The vast majority will eventually develop the …
Rett syndrome (RTT) is a severe X chromosome-linked debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder caused by mutations in the MECP2 gene affects 1 in 10,000-15,000 girls with no effective treatment. Our lab has been using RTT induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and neurons and astrocytes differentiated from iPSC as a platform to understand RTT disease mechanisms and develop treatment.
A peek into a collection of newspaper clippings about Ludell Swenson reveals the life of an extraordinarily accomplished person: marathoner, competitive tournament bowler, outspoken social services advocate. But what stands out the most is his lifelong participation in research that would lay the very foundation for the Waisman Center’s Communication Development Program (CDP) and the …
This study describes a time series-based method of middle ear muscle reflex (MEMR) detection using bilateral clicks, with implications for otoacoustic emission (OAE)-based medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) assays. Although current click-based methods can detect changes in the OAE evoking stimulus to monitor the MEMR, these methods do not discriminate between true MEMR-mediated vs. artifactual changes in the stimulus.
Congratulations to Aviad Hai, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and a Waisman affiliate, on being selected as a 2020 National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award.
If you’ve ever seen a graphical representation of a sound, you are probably familiar with what it looks like: hundreds of steep, tightly packed peaks and valleys, all of different heights, moving above and below a common line of symmetry that cuts horizontally through the middle. “When a sound travels through the air, it basically sets the molecules around us in motion, using sound pressure to create sort of a wave,” says Waisman researcher Michaela Warnecke, PhD.
Waisman investigator, Peter Ferrazzano, MD, has been named the first recipient of the Enid and Jerry Weygandt Professorship in Pediatric Critical Care. Ferrazzano, a Waisman investigator, leads the UW Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine which provides state-of-the-art care to all critically ill children admitted to American Family Children’s Hospital. The Weygandt Professorship will be front and …
Although epilepsy commonly presents with autism in children, it is currently unknown whether established estimates represent the prevalence and incidence of epilepsy in autistic adults. Our objective was to use population-level Medicaid data to determine prevalence, incidence, and antiepileptic drug use associated with epilepsy in a unique population of autistic adults aged 21+ with (N=2,738) and without (N=4,775) intellectual disability and to compare results to adults with intellectual disability alone (N=18,429).
