In recognition for her continued contributions and labor for Vanderbilt’s research and staff, Dr. Laurie Cutting was honored this year to be awarded the Peabody College Distinguished Faculty Colleague Award for 2021-2022. Receiving this award is an exceptional honor, yet there is always more to do. Research isn’t something you can hold or touch with your hands, but a horizon to strive for. And so, the work continues.
EBRL had a fun time meeting you at Brain Blast 2022!
Brain Blast is a free educational event for kids held every year by the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. Every year children K-8th grade get to meet and learn from real brain scientists about the brain and we always enjoy meeting everyone and teaching them about our lab and what we do at EBRL. This year Mr. Commodore himself came for a visit and even practiced laying still for an MRI! If you’d like to come to next year’s Brain Blast and participate in this free event, please check back with our site regularly and with the Vanderbilt Brain Institute’s calendar. Brain Blast occurs every year in March.
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.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Mercedes Spencer!
Dr. Spencer will begin a tenure-track Assistant Professor appointment in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in July 2022. Her ongoing and future work aims to identify potential early indicators of reading comprehension difficulties to better predict and prevent later reading comprehension problems in children.
Click to see the flyer for more information!
Flyer for Families of KindergartenersWe at EBRL hope that you and yours are doing well and staying safe in this unprecedented health event going on in the United States and across the world.
The times we are in are difficult for research and we here at the Education and Brain Science Research Lab are committed to the health and safety of both the participants and staff of our lab. Vanderbilt University itself has implemented social distancing measures on campus to help reduce the spread of the COVID-19 (corona) virus into the further community and keep high risk individuals protected. To that end, on campus visits for research have temporarily been suspended for the next few weeks and all staff are currently working virtually from home. We will keep in close contact with our currently scheduled participants in the upcoming weeks and keep them appraised of the situation as it develops, but if you would like to stay up to date on Vanderbilt’s response to the ongoing health crisis and find out more about how to protect yourself, go here: (https://www.vanderbilt.edu/coronavirus/)
We will be in close contact with our participants going forward, and will keep everyone informed as things progress. In the meantime, the lab has gone off-site in the best practice of social distancing. To help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus on your own, please see this guide on some general rules and guidelines that might help.
Fans of science and psychology can join members of the Education and Brain Research Lab at Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Science Day. The annual promotion and gathering of scientific minds gives those within the Kennedy Center a chance to exchange ideas and interact with each other’s research. Events will include a keynote address, two poster sessions, as well as lunch and a closing wine and cheese reception.
Find out more details here and register to attend (closes Thurs. Sept. 12) at the VKC website:
https://vkc.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vkc/scienceday/
Jump up on your feet and get your steps in today! The first Wednesday in April is National Walking Day! Here at Vanderbilt we got out and took a short break from doing research to go and stretch our legs with a good long walk!
As we all know, exercise and especially walking is good for your health and especially good for your brain! So we all hope you got to get out and enjoy the weather and take a good long walk with your friends and family!
You never know who you might run into!
Dr. Laurie Cutting to Lecture at Ohio State University’s Science Sundays’ Lecture Series
Find out more about her lecture and future Science Sunday lectures at the event page here: https://ccbbi.osu.edu/events/science-sundays
Mirroring the information provided there here:
Brain Blast 2019 was an outstanding success for EBRL!
The team was there, bright and early before all of the patrons, setting up our stations, a fun journey through the reading brain. We brought our handy-dandy “portable MRI” so the kids could all see what it was like to be a part of one of our research studies, and played they scanner noises so people could know what an MRI sounded like. Then, they got to color their way through each part of the reading network, and play a fun game for each part! At the very end, they got to even make their own reading network. The day was filled with fun and learning about the brain and the visitors never stopped!
Not to worry if you missed the event this year, there’s always the next! We will definitely be there!