Emily Harriott Awarded Lacy-Fischer Interdisciplinary Research Grant

At Vanderbilt, collaboration between the different colleges is a top priority. The university recognizes that some of the world’s most pressing problems won’t have a solution unless we pool our knowledge together. To that end, the graduate school offers the prestigious Lacy-Fischer Interdisciplinary Research Grants. These grants enable teams across fields to bridge the gap between the disciplines and add to their respective fields. EBRL’s own Emily Harriott has been awarded one of the grants for her and her collaborator Harrison Parent combining the fields of neuroscience and pharmacology to further examine children with Neurofibromatosis Type 1.

If you’d like to find out more about Vanderbilt’s push for interdisciplinary research, learn more here:

https://gradschool.vanderbilt.edu/funding/internal-funding-opportunities/

NIH funds $8 Million Grant for EBRL Research

The first few years of an infant’s life are vastly important for development. Long before enrolling in school, elements of their environment can affect the trajectories of children’s outcomes for the rest of their lives. In an effort to studies these environmental factors, the National Institutes of Health have awarded Vanderbilt a grant as part of a multi-institutional overview of variables influencing infant and child brain development, including substance exposure.

Substance use in pregnant women has increased over the past decade, highlighting the importance of efforts to understand how environmental and other exposures during pregnancy affect brain development and child outcomes. The PRELUDE consortium for the HEALthy Brain and Child Development study will recruit 2720 pregnant women in the 2nd and 3rd trimester and follow their children to age 10, using neuroimaging, behavioral assessments, EEG, biosample collection, and assessments of parent-child interaction and the home environment. This research will lead to greater understanding of factors affecting early childhood brain development, allowing targeted interventions and improved outcomes for mother-child dyads.

If you’d like to learn more about the study, you can learn more about it here or here.