Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
For a patient suffering from a life-threatening illness like COVID-19, communication means everything. If that person is on a ventilator and no visitors are allowed in the room, doctors and nurses must rely on tools and technology to communicate. Sarah Marshall, a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in the Waisman Center Communication Aids and Systems Clinic (CASC), …
A multi-university team of researchers found that expressive language sampling (ELS) can be useful in measuring outcomes in clinical trials targeting fragile X syndrome (FXS). According to their study, ELS, a set of procedures for collecting and analyzing spoken language in natural verbal interactions, yielded five language-related outcome measures that may be useful for treatment studies in intellectual disabilities, especially FXS.
Shortly after Raegan was born to Scott and his wife Carrie, she was diagnosed with phenylketonuria, or PKU — a rare metabolic disorder that prevents her from properly metabolizing phenylalanine, a common amino acid that exists in most proteins. PKU is a rare disorder that affects approximately 16,000 people in the U.S. It is one of 47 disorders for which newborns in Wisconsin are screened. If left untreated, it can cause intellectual disabilities, seizures, among other health-related issues.
New research by University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists reveals how a cellular filament helps neural stem cells clear damaged and clumped proteins, an important step in eventually producing new neurons.
“The newborn screening is most likely the first test of your child’s life,” says Mei Baker, MD, co-director of the Newborn Screening Laboratory at the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene and a Waisman Center affiliate investigator.
“I then found in speech-language pathology a wonderful marriage of my love for language and communication and helping individuals with disabilities, and came to UW-Madison to complete my graduate degree,” says Kanter, who has worked as a full-time speech-language pathologist, or SLP, at the Waisman Center since June 2018.
Helping youth with disabilities pursue post-high school employment and education opportunities can mean piecing together services from a broad range of agencies and organizations. This can be a challenge for anyone, but for low-income families, day-to-day survival may create additional barriers to accessing services and supports needed to launch youth with disabilities into adult life. …
Recent advances in genome sciences — the study of an organism’s complete set of DNA — present a golden opportunity to identify the genetic causes and underlying mechanisms of intellectual and developmental disabilities. These discoveries will also improve diagnosis and potential treatments for these conditions. To advance science in this innovative field, the Waisman Center …
A gift from the Mancheski Foundation continues to provide integral support to doctoral student Matthew Zammit as he furthers his research on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in individuals with Down syndrome. Zammit is beginning his fourth year as a doctoral student working in the laboratory of Bradley Christian, PhD, a Waisman investigator and professor …
It’s been seven years since Dick Morse, MD, a UW alum and retired child psychiatrist, and his lifelong partner, Lawrence M. Connor, MSW, a retired social worker, established an $11 million (now worth an estimated $17 million) planned estate gift for the Morse Society — a multidisciplinary graduate fellowship program at the Waisman Center.
