Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Title: Longitudinal development of grip strength in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Legend: The group with ASD demonstrated atypical motor development, characterized by similar grip strength during childhood but increasingly weaker grip strength from adolescence into adulthood. Grip strength was associated with adaptive daily living skills both concurrently and 8 years into the future, suggesting that …
Title: Appliance displays: accessibility challenges and proposed solutions Legend: Sample LED display containing a string of digits, each of which is a standard seven-segment digit. For each digit, our algorithm estimates its bounding box (shown in white) and then reads it aloud using text-to-speech (results in yellow). Citation: Fusco, G., Tekin, E., Giudice, N. A., …
Title: The Sox10 transcriptional regulator binds genes important for myelin formation in both oligodendrocytes of the spinal cord and Schwann cells in peripheral nerves. Legend: The diagram shows data from next generation sequencing techniques (known as ChIP-seq) to identify elements of DNA controlled by Sox10, which is required for formation of myelin in the central …
An increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism, and a state mandate for insurance coverage of autism treatment, has led to an expansion of autism treatment services in the Madison area. UW–Madison’s Waisman Center, which has long had a clinic that can diagnose children with autism, started offering behavioral treatment for the condition …
The Evjue Foundation, the charitable arm of the Capital Times, has awarded the Waisman Center $8,000 to expand the accessibility and reach of its free, community-oriented Day with the Experts series. The four Waisman Center Day with the Experts educational events focus on autism, cerebral palsy, cochlear implants and Down syndrome. The series features presentations …
Dan Campbell passed away recently. He was a prolific artist and contributed many pieces of his work to the Waisman Center’s Harvey A. Stevens Collection of Art by People with Disabilities. Dan and his family also participated in a number of research studies at the Waisman Center over the course of more than 30 years, …
Title: Skeletal muscle cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells Legend: Suzuki lab recently initiated a new project to establish skeletal muscle progenitor/stem cells derived from human pluripotent sources. Our culture method can produce skeletal muscle progenitor cells from human pluripotent stem cells generated from both healthy donors and patients with neuromuscular disorders. Such differentiated …
A new mouse model, developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the first to show that when more of a specific biological molecule moves between different parts of nerve cells in the mouse brain, it can lead to behaviors that resembles some aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in humans.
Title: Examining the Language Phenotype in Children with Typical Development, Specific Language Impairment, and Fragile X Syndrome Legend: Group performance on the Third Person Singular Probe and Past Tense Probe of the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment Citation: Haebig, E., Sterling, A., & Hoover, J. (in press). Examining the language phenotype in children with typical …
May 18, 2016 Adityarup “Rup” Chakravorty, Waisman Communications Jelte Rijkaart is 10 years old, with a ready smile, dark brown hair and warm brown eyes. He enjoys hanging out with people, especially his brother Roan. He is passionate about clocks—he has a wall dedicated to cuckoo clocks—and enjoys all sorts of movies about clocks on …
