Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Title: Listening effort, also known as cognitive load, is measured with pupil dilation (pupillometry). When speech sounds are degraded, people expend greater amount of ‘cognitive load’ to decipher the meaning of the speech. Legend: A: Subjects listen to sentences while their pupil size is measured using an eye tracker. Stimuli are varied from highly natural …
Title: Item Response Theory Analysis of ADHD Symptoms in Children with and without ADHD Legend: The “continuum” of ADHD in children. The IRT analysis shows that there is minimal clinical difference (i.e., within 1 standard deviation of the mean) on the general ADHD factor between a child who scores a 9 and a child who …
Title: Longitudinal changes in cortical thickness in autism and typical development Legend: Abnormal age-related cortical thickness trajectories in ASD. Coloured brain regions identify significant group differences in age-related cortical thickness changes. Each scan is represented by a dot and repeated scans are connected by lines. Regions depicted were significant both before and after controlling for …
Title: Effects of classroom bilingualism on task-shifting, verbal memory, and word learning in children Legend: Children who experienced two years of Spanish exposure in a dual-immersion classroom outperformed monolingual children when learning new made-up words (e.g., “gateke”). This was especially true when they learned new words for objects they were familiar with (e.g., turtle). Citation: …
Title: Increasing Nrf2 activity in astrocytes confers protection to Nrf2 knockout neurons Legend: Nrf2 KO cultures were traduced with 50 MOI adenovirus-Nrf2-GFP or adenovirus-GFP 48 hours prior to H2O2 treatment. Cultures were immunohistochemically analyzed following treatment with 50 µM H2O2. Neuronal marker, beta(III)-tubulin (red), eGFP (green); Hoechst 3258 (blue). Citation: Kraft, A.D., Johnson, D.A. and J.A. Johnson (2004). Nrf2-dependent ARE …
Title: Perceptual Ratio Processing Predicts Fractions Skills Legend: (Lay): College students were asked to decide which of two ratios were larger (examples in a-d) that were presented for 1.5 seconds. We show that people who were better at this perceptual task also performed better on four tasks involving symbolic fractions: comparing symbolic fractions (e.g., saying …
Title: iPSC derived Optic Vesicles (OVs)/Neural Retinal Progenitors (NRPs) – Production, Characterization and Cryopreservation Legend: 1) Representative pictures of selected OVs derived from iPSCs grown on E8/Matrigel. iPSCs, cultured on E8/Matrigel, mTeSR1/Matrigel, and E8/vitronectin, were differentiated into OVs (Optic vesicle-like structures) composed of NRPCs (neuroretinal progenitor cells). 2) Characterization of OVs (60 days in culture)- …
Title: Support Needs of Fathers and Mothers of Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder Legend: Left, top image: The most support needs most frequently rated as both important and unmet for both mothers and fathers. Mothers’ non-overlapping top important, unmet support needs were child-focused (financial support for treatments, information about programs and services, and …
Title: Characterization of a unique cell population marked by transgene expression in the adult cochlea of nestin-CreER(T2)/tdTomato-reporter mice Legend: Left image: Cochlea from an adult nestin-CreERT2/tdTomato-reporter mouse 56 days post tamoxifen injection. Low power macroscopic imaging analysis showed a pattern of tdTomato expression on the neural aspect of Sox2-positive supporting cells. An apical-basal gradient was not …
Title: The Relative Divorce Risk in Parents of a Child with Developmental Disabilities Legend: Left image: The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis with parents of a child with developmental disabilities (n=190) compared to parents of children without any disabilities (n=7,251) revealed that the two groups of parents do not show significantly different survival (i.e., remaining married) functions across …
