1.         Investigates the cognitive functions in children with minor sleep loss. Collaborators include physicians from pediatrics as well as psychologists from College of Education. This work is supported through an R01 to Dr. Molfese from NIH through 2009.

 

2.         A project conducted in collaboration with Dr. Linda Mayes, a developmental psychiatrist at Yale University currently is investigating prefrontal cortical functions in adolescent children who were exposed to cocaine prenatally. This work is funded through a NIH grant through 2009.

 

3.         The use of electrophysiological techniques to predict intervention outcomes in children with specific language impairments (SLI) in collaboration with Dr. Paul Yoder, a speech and language therapist, at the Vanderbilt University and is funded via an R01 from NIH through 2009.

 

4.         Effects of micro-gravity on attention and decision-making. This research is designed to evaluate the effects of weightlessness associated with space travel on brain processing and cognitive functions potentially impaired by reductions in daily sleep time. Several papers related to this work have been presented and are in press. This work is funded by several grants from NASA through 2010.

 

5.         A project utilizing high-density electrode arrays to study the effects of intervention on pre-math skills in 3- to 5-year old children is currently under way. The work is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Victoria Molfese in the College of Education & Human Development and is funded through a grant from the Department of Education through 2011.

 

6.         Investigations of the relation between brain responses recorded at birth and language/cognitive skills later in life. This project is a longitudinal study that attempts to replicate and extend 3 earlier longitudinal studies that found strong relationships between brain activity at birth and later cognitive abilities. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Victoria J. Molfese at the University of Louisville School of Education & Human Development and has been funded through grants from the National Institutes of Health. A revised application is planned pending additional pilot work.

 

7.         Testing has commenced in a study investigating changes in cerebral spinal fluid associated with weightlessness during space flight and orbit. This work is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Jens Heidenreich of the Department of Radiology and involves testing a pilot sample of 4 adults in earth gravity and simulated weightless conditions using a T3 MRI and specialized software. Funding is provided through a grant from University Hospital, Louisville, KY.

 

8.         Development of robust methods for representing knowledge, data mining and data integration in collaboration with eight other behavioral neuroscience labs world wide as part of the NEMO project funded by NIH through 2014.

 

9.         Neuroelectrical correlates of syntactic processing in preschool aged children and young infants. Brain responses are recorded to nouns or verbs presented during the video sequences in an attempt to determine when in development the brain activity can differentiate between different word functions. Previously funded in the past by the National Science Foundation, a new application is planned for October 2009.

 

10.       Development of an integrated system to record and integrate simultaneously information from High-density EEG and hemodynamic measures to Investigate Neural Functioning. A grant in collaboration with a private company is now under review by NIH.

 

11.       Utilizing MRI and ERP data in neonates and young children to develop neural conduction models that will enable for the first time researchers to utilize scalp recorded brain responses to map back onto specific neural structures that generated them. This work is currently underway and is in collaboration with EGI Inc in Eugene, OR.

 

12. A longitudinal study investigates brain-behavior changes for early language and cognitive development in high-risk preterm infants through 30 months of age. The project is now underway and is collaboration with neonatologists at Kosair Hospital in Louisville, KY.

 

13.       A collaboration is in progress with Dr. Adele Diamond at the University of British Columbia found that changes in brain processing occur in relation to changes in body position. A group of 45 children between 5 and 8-years of age were tested. This work has important implications for testing children or adults in fMRI settings where patients must recline rather than be seated, suggesting that fMRI studies may not reflect typical brain patterns of processing information.

 

14.       ERP investigations are underway in collaboration with Dr. Jeanne Johnson, an audiologist, at Washington State University to identify the bases for why some hearing impaired children are better able than others to benefit from cochlear implants. Studies investigate how the brain of hearing-impaired children with and without cochlear implants process syntactic, semantic, and phonological information.

 

15.       Clinical studies in collaboration with Dr. Victoria Molfese involving double-blind procedures are planned to investigate whether interventions during the first year of life will alter the likelihood of a child developing reading problems later in life. A grant application is planned for June 2009 for submission to NIH.

 

16.       A series of training studies focus on the ability of brain recording procedures to identifying when learning is occurring while preschool and elementary school-age children engage in series of spatial and linguistic tasks. A revised grant application is now under review by NIH.

 

17.       ERP correlates of thought processes. This series of 12 studies over a 5 year period utilizes ERPs and neural net algorithms to identify on a trial by trial basis the relationship between what one thinks and sees or hears. This work has implication for severely head injured patients and is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Lalit Gupta in the Electrical Engineering Department at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale.

 

18.       Theory of mind development during infancy. ERPs are used to study TOM through a series of visual and auditory tasks. The project is in collaboration with Dr. Linda Mayes (Yale University) and Dr. Peter Fonagy (University College of London). This study is in the early stages of planning.

 

19.       The impact of prenatal exposure to cocaine on the development of frontal lobe functions during periods of stress in adolescents. The planning for this project is in the early stages and involves collaboration with faculty from Psychiatry (Dr. Linda Mayes) and Endocrinology at Yale University.

 

20.       Narratives are collected from 7, 10, and 13-year old children while they tell stories and then submitted to detailed phonological, semantic, and syntactic analyses. These data are then correlated with changes in brain wave activity recorded from these same children while they are engaged in a phonological task. Analyses focus on identifying relationships between specific linguistic skills and brain electrical activity recorded from different regions of the brain. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Leslie Gill at New Mexico State University and Dr. Victoria Molfese, University of Louisville.