Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Palm Beach Can Lead in Connecting Neuroscience with the Arts – Dans Papers

The World Health Organizations (WHO) recently released position paper, Optimizing Brain Health Across the Life Course, states that optimizing brain health improves mental and physical health and also creates positive social and economic impacts, all of which contribute to greater wellbeing and help advance society.

It additionally states that multisectoral engagement and collaboration are urgently needed in order to move the brain health agenda forward for all people.

Palm Beach County is moving the brain health agenda forward through a unique collaboration that combines our world-class brain science institutions and robust cultural assets as a model for the emerging field of the neuroarts a convergence between science, the arts and technology.

Palm Health Foundation has convened the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute, the Max Plank Florida Institute for Neuroscience, the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County and the Palm Beaches to form the Palm Beach County NeuroArts Collaborative to focus on identifying and mapping local partners, programs, resources and existing research to support the advancement of neuroarts in South Florida.

Neuroarts is the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain and behavior, and how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and wellbeing.

The Palm Beach County Neuroarts Collaborative has caught the attention of the leaders in neuroarts, the Johns Hopkins International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, and the Aspen Institutes Health, Medicine and Society Program. These institutions have partnered to create the NeuroArts Blueprint initiative, designed to strengthen, standardize and propel the emerging field of neuroarts.

Our Palm Beach County collaborative is aligning with the NeuroArts Blueprint, and its leaders have invited us to become its first local Community Arts Coalition Partner.

The effect of the arts on health and wellbeing has long been experienced by generations of people and cultures. Now, as science and technological advances allow scientists to see and measure the effect of the arts on the brain, the field of neuroarts is catching fire, with the potential for learning and positive impact on mental health and neurodegenerative diseases that are top of mind for many Floridians, including dementia, Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease.

It is a field that could have worldwide impact as one in three people will develop a neurological disorder at some point in their lifetime, according to WHO.

Examples of the connection between the arts and the brain abound. A veteran who suffered a traumatic brain injury manages his epilepsy and PTSD by playing the ukulele. A young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder paints to demystify her condition and work through her emotions.

A former prima ballerina with Alzheimers disease listens to Tchaikovskys Swan Lake and begins to spontaneously perform from her wheelchair, lifting her arms in sync with the choreography stored deep in her brain.

There is a role for all to play in contributing to human flourishing through the neuroarts. We are aligned with the NeuroArts Blueprint in their belief that to realize its potential, neuroarts must become a fully recognized field of research and practice, with educational and training pathways, dedicated funding, supportive public sector and private sector policies, effective leadership, well-crafted communications strategies and infrastructure capacity.

Optimizing brain health affects our families, workplaces, schools and our healthcare system. With our commitment to integrating science and the arts to help people reach their full health potential and the communitys support, we are taking one significant step toward South Florida becoming known as the Brain Coast, as highly recognized as Floridas Space Coast, and with far-reaching effects on wellbeing and society.

To learn more about the neuroarts efforts in Palm Beach County, visit palmhealthfoundation.org/train-the-brain.

Randy D. Blakely, Ph.D., is executive director of the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute. Dave Lawrence is president and CEO of the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County. And Patrick J. McNamara, LCSW, is president and CEO of the Palm Health Foundation.

Original post:
Palm Beach Can Lead in Connecting Neuroscience with the Arts - Dans Papers

Neuroscience

Understanding the difference between the mind and the brain – Nature.com

Jean Mary Zarate: 00:04

Hello and welcome to Tales From The Synapse, a podcast brought to you by Nature Careers in partnership with Nature Neuroscience. Im Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal Nature Neuroscience. In this series we speak to brain scientists all over the world about their life, their research, their collaborations, and the impact of th eir work. In episode eight, we meet a neuroscientist and author who focuses on and celebrates the differences between people's brains.

Chantel Prat: 00:40

Hi, my name is Chantel Prat. I am a professor in the departments of psychology, neuroscience and linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle. And I love to study individual differences. I'm really interested in how individual brains operate and understand the world differently.

I feel like were living through a great social paradox. People are discussing the importance of having diverse minds and brains and decision-making spaces.

But yet, we dont seem to be getting any better at talking through our differences. I wrote the book The Neuroscience of You because I realized that my perspective, the way I understand the gap between our personal subjective realities, and the objective, ostensibly knowable world out there, makes a big difference in how I relate to others.

It drives a curiosity about people who believe differently than I do, instead of a defensiveness about my own perspective. And I thought it was really important that if I could give people some concrete data about the ways that different brains understand the world, and that these differences don't necessarily map on to being better or worse, or right or wrong, I might help give us the ability to connect with and understand others who work differently.

Its really ironic, because my book is called The Neuroscience of You. But there was a whole lot of new research going on when I wrote it. This wasnt helped by the fact that a few months after I started writing in earnest, the real-life experiment that we all participated in, the one that none of us signed a consent form for, that revolved around this pandemic that changed every bit of our surroundings, was happening to me as well. I was participating in this experiment. And I couldnt help but notice and be frustrated by the fact that my brain was responding to the pandemic in a way that seemed very different from the people around me.

I heard about people getting in the best shapes of their lives and cooking more than ever, while I didn't seem to be doing any of the things I always promised myself I would do if I had more time.

And, you know it was into the mixology chapter where I started thinking about stress and cortisol in the brain, that I realized the way that our genes and our neurotransmitters influenced the way we respond to stress.

My brain was changing in response to this chronic stress and the neurochemicals that it was being soaked in. And my brain was changing in a way that was different than other peoples, right? So, in many ways, as I was writing the book, I was going through this real-life experiment of having my environment change around me, and trying to figure out who I am in response to these changes in the environment.

I figure if people who read the book learn as much about themselves when they read it as I did when I wrote it, it will be a huge success.

Chantel Prat: 04:12

Phineas Gage was a railway worker who survived a horrific accident that resulted in a railway spike being blown through his cheek and out the top of the right hemisphere of his brain.

One of the remarkable things about the story is that he literally walked away from this gory accident. When he walked away, most of his physical abilities were intact, but the things that made him him, his characteristic ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, were changed.

As his physicians wrote, Gage was no longer Gage. Once a very dependable man, the kind of go-to guy you would want on your team, he became much more unpredictable, sort of abandoning implants for things that seemed more feasible, something that was attractive in front of him, a lot more uninhibited.

And this was the fact that actually captivated me and got me interested in neuroscience in the first place. As a pre-med student that was learning about the organs in our body and the jobs that they do, it struck me, more like hit me like a ton of bricks, that while the lungs have a job to oxygenate the blood in your body, the heart has a job to pump this oxygenated blood throughout the body, the brain is an organ that takes that oxygenated blood and translates it into the energy that creates every thought, feeling and behaviour that makes you you.

Any way that you change the brain, you change the individual. And so one thing that's characteristic about my work is I've always been interested in the relationship between the mind and the brain, at the level of the individual, not how do brains work in general.

Or how do most brains work. But what are the differences in ways that brains work that make you you, Phineas Gage, and the way his brain changed in a dramatic way, and it changed his personality? was my first inspiration into this question.

Chantel Prat: 06:30

I think one of the things that really allows me to appreciate differences is that I have in my lifetime occupied many different spaces.

And what I mean by that is, I grew up in a small rural town in northern California, you know, the kind of one-stoplight town that we could ride horses through main street where my dad lived in Calistoga.

And where not a lot of people leave and go to college. Neither one of my parents have college degrees. I'm a first-generation college student. And I really value the kind of practical knowledge that people that I was surrounded by growing up use to operate in the world.

And as I became more and more educated, I also appreciate the gap between the kinds of things you learn in books, and the kinds of ways that you behave in the real world, the kind of knowledge that you use in everyday life.

So I think, coming from a small town, coming from a background where people use practical knowledge rather than book knowledge to succeed, shapes my views in a large part.

Chantel Prat: 07:54

I also had a series of adventures and misadventures throughout my college training, one of which was becoming pregnant as a teenager. So I undertook all of the adventures in neuroscience. In fact, part of what got me my first job in neuroscience was having a child of my own.

I was 19 years old when I gave birth to my daughter, Jasmine, and I first recorded her brain when she was 17 months old.

Having experience with children got me this critical job in a cognitive neuroscience lab where we were looking at brain development, and they wanted people with baby-charming experiences, because we had to do what I still believe is one of the hardest jobs in neuroscience, and that's getting a baby to wear an EEG cap.

So for those of you out there that are parents and ever tried to get a kid to wear something on their head as part of a Halloween costume or to keep them warm, you know that this job is not for slouches.

Once you put an EEG cap, its kind of like a little swim cap that has microphone-like devices sewn into it that allows us to eavesdrop on the electrical activity of the brain.

Once you put that thing on the head of a baby and fill it with the goop thats necessary to listen to increase the conductivity, they pull it off, its game over. So you know, the fact that I had my own child and had this experience with, you know, getting babies to wear things on their heads and captivating their attention, really was was my first qualification.

Once I had decided I wanted to study the brain, I had no experience and the only kind of background I had was, Well look, I have my own child.

So I have significant experience with wrangling them, so to speak. And it just so turns out when we talk about nature versus nurture, which is one of the quintessential questions that drive psychologists and neuroscientists, it turns out that my daughter gets her temperament from her father, which is wonderful.

Because unlike her mother, she's very easygoing and has a long attentional span. And because of this, she participated in just about every psychology or neuroscience experiment that was happening at the University of California, San Diego, which is where I was as an undergraduate.

She loved it. She would sit there for hours, listen to sounds, look in boxes for things that had been hidden from her, get stickers, talk to the people around. And, and so I brought her into practice this capping procedure and to get good at it.

And when we did, we put her into the experimental room and played words that she knew and didn't know. And I got to see her brain understanding language. What was remarkable about this is that I went through the whole process of analyzing the data, looked at the results.

And we're sure I had done something wrong, because unlike the children that we were studying in the lab, who typically have language signals coming from either both halves of their brain, both hemispheres of their brain, or moving towards a left-lateralized specialization for language, my daughter, Jasmine showed the differences between words that she knew and words that she didnt know, over the right side of her brain the most strongly.

I thought I had definitely done something wrong. I called in my supervisor, we discussed it and she said, You know, is there any chance that Jasmine will be left handed?

It turns out (long story short), Jasmine's brain showed me she was left handed before her behaviour could. Most kids start stably reaching for things by about 20 months to 24 months. And she was 17 months old. And I got to see that her brain was actually reversed-lateralized for language.

Afterwards, we followed up with a bunch of other fun tests like an oddball paradigm where she just listened to tones of different frequencies. And it turns out that for everything that we looked at at the time, Jasmines brain showed the opposite pattern is to what is typically reported in the literature.

This just drove my curiosity about individual brains even more. So here I am, you know, having an atypical adventure of my own, going through undergraduate and graduate school as a parent and a single parent, and learning that my daughters brain in many ways, not only her temperament, but the place that her language and attentional processes wound up, was the opposite of mine, is fascinating.

Chantel Prat: 12:40

Whats interesting to me is that this world-building that different brains engage in doesnt only happen when youre reading something, when youre engaged in a fictional experience. We make inferences about whats happening around us in the real world all of the time.

So here in the US we had a popular version of this when people got up in arms because they couldn't agree about the colour of a dress, a picture of a dress that was printed on the Internet, whether the dress was black and blue, or white and gold.

And if you haven't seen the dress, and youre interested, you can go to Wikipedia and look up the dress. And lo and behold you will see the picture of a torso of a woman wearing a dress. And it will appear to be clearly either white and gold, or blue and black to you.

Now the reason that this was so controversial in America is because many of us have learned at some point in our education that the colours that we see in the world around us map on in some one-to-one fashion to the energy that is bouncing into our eyes, often object, right. Weve all learned at some point about this colour spectrum and how it relates to wavelengths of light.

But if the way we perceived colour was this simple, if it really were related in a one-on-one fashion to the characteristics of the light that's entering our eyes, then we would all see a green apple turn red in the sunset, and blue in a shadow.

Instead, our brains use the context that objects occur in to figure out what colour they are all the time. We learn from experience that an object is less likely to change colour than the quality of the light bouncing off of the object.

And so really, what we do is take a survey of the kinds of light energy in any situation and decide what colour an individual item is, based on the context. First, what made the dress controversial is that the context is largely clipped out of it.

And its unclear whether the lighting in this picture is coming from behind the individual, or coming from overhead. People who see the dress as blue and black, which it actually is in real life, are assuming that the person is standing in some kind of overhead or artificially-lit room, that theyre not in a shadow.

People who see white and gold, their brains are automatically assuming that the dress is lit from behind, and that the person is in a shadow. When we see things in shadows, we automatically subtract out these blue-black wavelengths to figure out what colour something is.

Whats really cool is vision researcher Pascal Wallisch found that you could predict some percentage of variability and how people would perceive that dress, based on their chronotypes, or what time of day they usually wake up, and what time of day they usually go to sleep.

This is a way of figuring out what kind of lighting people are usually exposed to. And if you spend a lot of time up in naturally-lit environments up in the sun, and you see things in shadows, it turns out youre more likely to see the dress as white and gold than people who are night owls and spend a lot of time awake after dark and in artificially-lit places.

This is just a tiny example of how our experiences shape this world-building that we're doing, the way our brains create inferences and connect the dots, even for something as elementary as colour. And they do this so quickly and so automatically that we, the kinds of conscious experiences that we identify with, are completely unaware that our brain is is taking shortcuts and making these decisions for us.

Chantel Prat: 17:05

There are two things that I really hope readers will take away when they read The Neuroscience of You.

The first is that the one-size-fits-all approach to neuroscience that has dominated the field for over a century doesnt fit anyone very well. Most of the books on the shelf talk about how brains work.

But this view is based on group averages, and its not even based on very representative group averages. What Im hoping to show people is that normal when it comes to brain functioning, is a mult-dimensional space and not a single value. And that in that space there are lots of different ways that brains can work that are not necessarily better or worse than one another, just different. They've evolved to solve different problems.

And when it comes to abnormal, you know the fact that normal is a variable multi-dimensional space is important to consider because the distinction between normal and abnormal is also not a, its not a bi- dimensional decision.

Abnormal can mean two different things in this multi-dimensional space. One is that a value or a particular way of being is rare, atypical, and that says nothing about the functionality of that way of being.

On the other hand, there are ways of being that have been characterized by modern society as dysfunctional, that are not at all abnormal.

For instance, almost one in 10 American children can meet the diagnostic criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This is because children whose brains work like this struggle to function under the constraints of modern society.

But its important to note that a brain design that has that survived and exists in one in 10 individuals is not at all atypical, and that there are benefits to these kind of organically-driven ways of focusing that we may not have considered yet.

So number one point. Normal is a space, not a place. And it's something that we have vastly under-considered when trying to describe how brains work.

The second point I want to make is about connecting to brains that work differently from yours. Social neuroscience is providing more and more whopping amounts of evidence that we tend to gravitate towards other people whose brains work like ours.

What this means is that knowing another person is a concept which I believe relates to reverse-engineering the mind that drives the behaviours you can see, When were trying to understand or know another person, we tend to default to how our own brain works.

This is because humans, like many other social primates, use mirror neurons as a way of understanding the behaviour of others.

In fact, if I watch a person execute some action, or even a primate, another (a nonhuman primate), my brain will activate the same programs that it takes to make me execute that same action.

Through mirroring, I can learn from the behaviors of others and by simulating them in my mind. But I think whats going wrong is that if the brain thats driving the behaviour of another doesnt work like mine, the inferences that I make when I connect the dots or fill in the gaps, and try to know that person, are wrong. I make assumptions, Im forced to make assumptions when all I have is observable behaviours, about the why, of how of why that person is behaving the way theyre behaving.

And if I dont have the knowledge or tools to understand that different brains might understand the world in different ways, and make decisions based on different understandings, I'm gonna get it wrong when Im put in front of somebody who thinks differently than I do.

So the second thing I hope a reader takes away from my book is a set of tools for understanding the mind of a person that is driven by a brain that works differently from their own.

Chantel Prat: 22:02

When I set out to write the book, I had two very clear goals. One was to write a book that was more accurate than the typical neuroscience book on the shelf, which tends to take the one size fits all approach. And the second was to make a book that was accessible to non-academics.

And it wasnt until I actually started writing the book that I realized how many places those two goals came into conflict with one another.

As an academic, I want to tell my reader everything I know, I want to build this case. But then everything I know has, like, 400 other back stories that support it.

And as a science communicator, I want to tell the reader what it all means. And I think that this is the biggest way that writing the book changed my perspective about science and where it belongs.

Because now Im engaged in conversations with thousands of people I may never meet. Its a one-way conversation. Theyre reading my book, and maybe having important haystack moments where they can bring their real-life knowledge and experiences to bear on my words, and we'll flesh out what it all means to them.

Thats incredibly powerful, and scary too, and vulnerable. But I dont think science belongs to academics alone. I think that if we have things that we know that might influence the way people understand themselves or one another, we need to do our best to share it and to share it in a way that might make somebody laugh or cry, or be fascinated or be angry, might make them feel something, It might make them learn something. It might make them curious. I think this is our responsibility. And that's how writing this book has really changed my perspective on science and life.

Jean Mary Zarate: 24:24Now thats it for this episode of Tales From The Synapse. Im Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at Nature Neuroscience. The producer was Don Byrne. Thanks again to Chantel Prat. And thank you for listening.

Continued here:
Understanding the difference between the mind and the brain - Nature.com

Neuroscience

The Cold Truth: Frequent Common Colds Linked to Alzheimers Risk – Neuroscience News

Summary: Suffering from frequent colds and flu may impact brain aging, accelerate cognitive decline, and could increase the risk of developing Alzheimers disease. In mice, intermittent experiences of moderate inflammation, such as that caused by the flu or common cold, caused impaired cognition and disrupted neural communication.

Source: Tulane University

Getting sick often may impact how quickly the brain ages and increase the risk of dementia or other forms of cognitive decline.

These are the findings of a Tulane University study conducted in partnership with West Virginia University and the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health and published in the journalBrain, Behavior and Immunity.

The study examined aging male mice and found that repeated, intermittent experiences with moderate inflammation, such as that caused by the flu or a seasonal head cold, caused impaired cognition and disrupted communication between neurons in those mice.

We were interested in asking whether differences in infection experience could account, at least in part, for the differences in rates of dementia we see in the population, said lead author Elizabeth Engler-Chiurazzi, PhD, a behavioral neuroscientist in the Tulane Department of Neurosurgery.

The mice we were studying were adults approaching middle age that had intact faculties, and yet, when exposed to intermittent inflammation, they remembered less and their neurons functioned more poorly.

This study is the first to model repeated, intermittent infections in mice and examine the long-term consequences for brain function and health.

Humans often experience infections and inflammation at substantially higher rates than laboratory mice. But given that impairments were observed in mice after only five intermittent inflammatory treatments, the cognitive change in humans may be more robust.

Our mice only experienced intermittent sickness-like inflammation a handful of times, so the fact that we observed impairments at all was surprising, Engler-Chiurazzi said.

The effects were subtle, but thats why I find these results meaningful: In a human, cognitive impairments from a similar number of inflammatory experiences might not be noticeable in their daily lives but could have cumulative effects that negatively impact the aging brain.

The findings may have important implications for standard of care around how infections are handled among the elderly and those at risk for dementia. And they are perhaps more relevant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing research around the effects of long-COVID syndrome.

Going forward, Engler-Chiurazzi said more work needs to be done to understand why infections impact the brain and how to mitigate those effects. In addition, she hopes follow-up studies will investigate whether more vulnerable populations impacted by health disparities face a higher burden of neurological effects.

The biggest take away from this research, in our opinion, is the importance of staying as healthy and infection-free as possible, she said.

Author: Andrew YawnSource: Tulane UniversityContact: Andrew Yawn Tulane UniversityImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Intermittent systemic exposure to lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammation disrupts hippocampal long-term potentiation and impairs cognition in aging male mice by Elizabeth Engler-Chiurazzi et al. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Abstract

Intermittent systemic exposure to lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammation disrupts hippocampal long-term potentiation and impairs cognition in aging male mice

Age-related cognitive decline, a common component of the brain aging process, is associated with significant impairment in daily functioning and quality of life among geriatric adults.

While the complexity of mechanisms underlying cognitive aging are still being elucidated, microbial exposure and the multifactorial inflammatory cascades associated with systemic infections are emerging as potential drivers of neurological senescence.

The negative cognitive and neurobiological consequences of a single pathogen-associated inflammatory experience, such as that modeled through treatment with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), are well documented. Yet, the brain aging impacts of repeated, intermittent inflammatory challenges are less well studied.

To extend the emerging literature assessing the impact of infection burden on cognitive function among normally aging mice, here, we repeatedly exposed adult mice to intermittent LPS challenges during the aging period. Male 10-month-old C57BL6 mice were systemically administered escalating doses of LPS once every two weeks for 2.5 months.

We evaluated cognitive consequences using the non-spatial step-through inhibitory avoidance task, and both spatial working and reference memory versions of the Morris water maze. We also probed several potential mechanisms, including cortical and hippocampal cytokine/chemokine gene expression, as well as hippocampal neuronal function via extracellular field potential recordings.

Though there was limited evidence for an ongoing inflammatory state in cortex and hippocampus, we observed impaired learning and memory and a disruption of hippocampal long-term potentiation. These data suggest that a history of intermittent exposure to LPS-induced inflammation is associated with subtle but significantly impaired cognition among normally aging mice.

The broader impact of these findings may have important implications for standard of care involving infections in aging individuals or populations at-risk for dementia.

Excerpt from:
The Cold Truth: Frequent Common Colds Linked to Alzheimers Risk - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Market will Offer Increased Growth Prospects For … – Digital Journal

Neuroscience Market Report Description:

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Neuroscience is the study of nervous system, which is related to evaluating and imaging of the brain activity. Neuroscience is a broad term, which focuses on molecular, cellular, developmental, structural, functional, evolutionary, computing, psychosocial, and medical aspects of the nervous system. The advancement in biology, pharmaceutical science, medicine, cognitive science, biomedical engineering is evolving neuroscience.

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Alpha Omega, Inc., GE Healthcare, Axion Biosystems, Inc., Siemens Healthineers, Scientifica Ltd., Blackrock Microsystems LLC, Femtonics Ltd., LaVision Biotec GmbH, Intan Technologies, NeuroNexus Technologies, Inc., Newport Corporation, Neuralynx Inc., Plexon Inc., Mediso Medical Imaging Systems, Noldus Information Technology, Sutter Instrument Corporation, Thomas Recording GmbH, and Trifoil Imaging Inc.

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Neuroscience

6 UI faculty honored with 2023 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence – Iowa Now

The Board of Regents, State of Iowa, has selected six outstanding University of Iowa faculty members to be honored for their extraordinary contributions and sustained record of excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Each recipient of the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence received a $1,500 stipend and will be honored at an awards celebration during the June Board of Regents meeting on the UIcampus.

The recipients were selected by committees appointed by shared governance in collaboration with the UI administration and confirmed by the Board ofRegents.

Ted AbelAbel, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, is founding director of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute (INI) and co-director of the Hawkeye Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center. He has developed the INI into a world-class interdisciplinary research institute, involving more than 140 faculty members from seven UI colleges and 30 departments, and growing external grant funding for the institute to about $90 million in FY22. An internationally renowned neuroscientist, Abel has published more than 230 research articles focusing on neurobiology, epigenetics, and behavioral neuroscience. He is the principal investigator on three active NIH R01 grants, securing more than $2 million in funding for FY22. Committed to community engagement and education as well as research, he has overseen the creation of a new undergraduate neuroscience major that now enrolls more than 280 students, and he is active in various outreach events, including serving as the UI Presidential Lecturer in 2021. Abel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement ofScience.

Joseph CavanaughCavanaugh, professor and head of the Department of Biostatistics in the College of Public Health, is a methodological and collaborative researcher who leverages his expertise in statistics and biostatistics to investigate a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary topics. He has published more than 170 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has made particularly important contributions in the areas of statistical model selection, time series analysis, infectious diseases epidemiology, and injury prevention. He played a significant role in the state of Iowas COVID-19 response, leading a team that partnered with the Iowa Department of Public Health to analyze data and develop predictive models to help the state respond to the pandemic. He has supervised 19 doctoral dissertations and 39 masters projects, and is active in service to the department, college, university, and profession. His efforts to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Department of Biostatistics recently helped the department earn recognition from the American Statistical Association. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and has received numerous teaching and mentoring awards, including the UI Hancher-Finkbine Medallion, the College of Public Health Faculty Teaching Award, and the College of Public Health Faculty MentorAward.

Rebekah KowalKowal, professor and departmental executive officer in the Department of Dance in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), is an accomplished scholar known for her fierce advocacy for the arts and dedication to providing students with the best educational experience possible. She has co-edited an influential volume on dance and published two books, including Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America, which was a finalist for the prestigious 2021 Outstanding Book Award given by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. She has taken on substantial service roles within the university and in the dance field, including service as a board member for the National Association of Schools of Dance, vice president for awards and prizes for the Dance Studies Association, vice president for the Society of Dance History Scholars, and executive co-editor of Dance Research Journal. An exceptional teacher who is devoted to fostering inclusion and collaboration among her students, she has mentored numerous MFA theses and honors projects, and was honored as the Outstanding Honors Teacher by the UI Honors Program in 2007. She was named the CLAS Deans Scholar in 2009 and CLAS Collegiate Scholar in2020.

Joseph Reinhardt Reinhardt is professor and Roy J. Carver Chair in Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering, where he has overseen remarkable growth in both the departments student and faculty populations. His leadership helped the department secure a $12 million naming gift from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, which has enabled a significant expansion of research and teaching activities. A highly respected expert in lung imaging and medical image analysis, he has received external research support from organizations including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, and he has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal papers. He is an elected fellow of several engineering organizations, including the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association. Reinhardt is a popular teacher and mentor who has taught courses at all levels of the engineering curriculum, including the first-year Introduction to Engineering Computing course. He is committed to developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and academics, and has successfully mentored 16 doctoral and 21 mastersstudents.

Karin Weber-GasparoniWeber-Gasparoni, professor and chair of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry in the College of Dentistry, is a respected dental scholar whose research focuses on dental care for patients with special needs, infants, and children from low-income, high-risk populations. She has authored seven book chapters, more than 43 published papers, and more than 100 abstracts, and has active grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Health Resources and Services Administration. Her demonstrated commitment to service at the local, university, and national levels includes membership on the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistrys Council of Clinical Affairs, helping set national standards for clinical pediatric dentistry. She led a $1 million fundraising campaign for the departments Pediatric Dental Excellence Fund and was instrumental in fundraising for the Dr. Jenn Wolfe Memorial Campaign for mental health resources for dental students and practitioners. As a teacher in a clinical setting, course director, lecturer, and mentor, she has positively influenced students and residents both in the College of Dentistry and in the Carver College of Medicine. She received the College of Dentistrys James McLeran Faculty Award in 2012 and the Hancher-Finkbine Medallion in2022.

Catherine Welch Welch is professor of educational measurement and statistics in the College of Education. As Feldt Faculty Scholar and co-director of the Iowa Testing Programs, Welch is highly regarded for her expertise in student assessment in K-12 education. Her work has shaped the assessment landscape across the state and country. She has authored multiple editions of the High School Equivalency Test and is a principal author of the Iowa Assessments, as well as a lead author of the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress. Dedicated to teaching and mentoring, Welch has played a crucial role in creating materials for the MA in teaching, leadership, and cultural competence program and providing advising and instruction in the educational measurement and statistics program. Her extensive service record includes contributions to the National Council on Measurement in Education, the National Research Council on Developing Assessments for Science Standards, and the Statewide Assessment System Advisory Committee. Her research on assessment practices has earned her numerous awards, including three Distinguished Research Awards from the Iowa Educational Research and Evaluation Association and six Inventor Awards from theUI.

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6 UI faculty honored with 2023 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence - Iowa Now

Neuroscience

A Handful of Blueberries a Day Could Help Improve Brain Function – Neuroscience News

Summary: Adding a handful of blueberries to your daily diet can help reduce blood pressure, improve memory and cognitive function, and boost reaction times.

Source: Kings College London

New research from Kings Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine has found that eating a handful of wild blueberries daily has health benefits, including lowered blood pressure, faster reaction time, and improved memory and brain cognition.

The study, published in theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was led by researchers from Kings and the University of Reading.

It involved a randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled trial of 61 healthy men and women aged 65 to 80, who drank a beverage made with 26 grams of freeze-dried wild blueberry powder (equivalent to about 178 grams of whole berries) whilst the other group drank a matching placebo.

Over twelve weeks, researchers found that volunteers who consumed the berry powder in drinks experienced better memory and an improved accuracy on attention tasks, as well as lower blood pressure.

Also during this period, after consuming berries the blood pressure of the test group was lower when compared to the placebo group, in addition to having an increased flow mediated dilation (FMD), which leads to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

This study is the first of its kind and the results suggest that a daily intake of wild blueberries could help lower peoples risk of cardiovascular disease by lowering their blood pressure and improving blood vessel function, said Dr Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, Reader in Nutrition at the Department of Nutritional Sciences.

Dr Rodriguez-Mateos added: We know from previous research that there are potential advantages from consuming blueberries, but this study went further by exploring how a daily and dietary achievable measure of blueberries could benefit our cognitive and cardiovascular health simultaneously in a healthy older population.

We think the blue pigments in blueberries, the anthocyanins, which are a type of polyphenols also present in other foods such as strawberries, raspberries, red grapes and purple vegetables, are behind these effects as increases in their metabolites were seen in the urine of the volunteers after 12 weeks consumption.

Professor Claire Williams, Chair of the Neuroscience Department for University of Reading, said: Its clear from this study that consuming wild blueberries is beneficial to cognitive function, as well as vascular health.

The group who had the wild blueberry powder showed signs of better memory and greater mental flexibility when completing cognitive tasks. This is consistent with what we already know about the health benefits of anthocyanin-rich foods. It points to an important role of polyphenols in healthy aging.

Funding: The study was funded by theWild Blueberry Association of North America.

Author: Ana Rodriguez-MateosSource: Kings College LondonContact: Ana Rodriguez-Mateos Kings College LondonImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Wild Blueberry (Poly)phenols can Improve Vascular Function And Cognitive Performance In Healthy Older Males And Females: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial by Ana Rodriguez-Mateos et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Abstract

Wild Blueberry (Poly)phenols can Improve Vascular Function And Cognitive Performance In Healthy Older Males And Females: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial

Evidence suggests that intake of blueberry (poly)phenols is associated with improvements in vascular function and cognitive performance. Whether these cognitive effects are linked to increases in cerebral and vascular blood flow or changes in the gut microbiota is currently unknown.

A double-blind, parallel randomized controlled trial was conducted in 61 healthy older individuals aged 65-80 y. Participants received either 26g of freeze-dried wild blueberry (WBB) powder (302 mg anthocyanins) or a matched placebo (0 mg anthocyanins). Endothelial function measured by flow-mediated dilation (FMD), cognitive function, arterial stiffness, blood pressure (BP), cerebral blood flow (CBF), gut microbiome and blood parameters were measured at baseline and 12 weeks following daily consumption. Plasma and urinary (poly)phenol metabolites were analyzed using micro-elution solid phase-extraction coupled with LC-MS.

A significant increase in FMD and reduction in 24 h ambulatory systolic BP were found in the WBB group compared to placebo (0.86%; 95% CI 0.56, 1.17, p<0.001; -3.59 mmHg; 95% CI -6.95, -0.23, p=0.037; respectively). Enhanced immediate recall on the auditory verbal learning task, alongside better accuracy on a task-switch task were also found following WBB treatment compared to placebo (p<0.05). Total 24 h urinary (poly)phenol excretion increased significantly in the WBB group compared to placebo. No changes in CBF or gut microbiota composition were found.

Daily intake of WBB powder, equivalent to 178 g fresh weight, improves vascular and cognitive function, and decreases 24h ambulatory systolic BP in healthy older individuals. This suggests that WBB (poly)phenols may reduce future cardiovascular disease (CVD) disease risk in an older population, and may improve episodic memory processes and executive functioning in older adults at risk of cognitive decline.

NCT04084457

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A Handful of Blueberries a Day Could Help Improve Brain Function - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Autism May Be Linked to Different Perceptions of Movement in Infancy – Neuroscience News

Summary: At the age of five months, children who are later diagnosed with autism show different activity in the visual cortex when viewing certain types of movement. Findings reveal those with ASD experience differences in perceptions of their surroundings from a young age, and this may affect their learning and overall development.

Source: Uppsala University

A new study from researchers at Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet shows that children who go on to develop symptoms of autism have different activity in their brains visual cortex from as early as five months when looking at certain types of movement.

This finding may indicate that autistic people perceive their surroundings in a different way even from a very young age, which could affect their development and learning.

Autism is defined by challenges with social communication together with restricted and repetitive features in behavior and interests.

However, research shows thatautistic peoplealso have a different perception of and reaction to various stimuli. In particular, many studies have shown a connection between autism and difficulties in perceiving whole units in visual movement patternssuch as when a flock of birds forms a common movement in the sky.

Being able to integrate movement signals into an overall figure is important in terms of the ability to correctly perceive how objects and surfaces move in relation to the viewer.

The new study, published inCommunications Biology, examined activity in the brains of five-month-old infants sitting on their parents laps while viewing different types of visual information.

The researchers measured both how thebrainreacted to simple visual changes in light (such as a line changing direction) and morecomplex patternswhere the ability to see whole units was put to the test.

The assessment used EEG technology, which records weak electrical signals created naturally in the brains cerebral cortex when processing information. The signals were measured using electrodes placed around the head on a specially adapted cap.

The infants who later onat age threeexhibited many of the classic symptoms of autism had different brain activity when complex movement patterns were shown on the screen.

This suggests that the brains of autistic people process visual motion differently from early infancy. Simpler visual changes, on the other hand, produced a clear and similar response in all of the childrens brains.

Seeing this difference several years before the symptoms of autism develop is something completely new, and contributes to our understanding of whatearly developmentlooks like in autism. Autism has a strong hereditary component, and it is likely that the differences we see in visual perception in infancy are connected togenetic differences, explains Terje Falck-Ytter, Professor at the Department of Psychology at Uppsala University and principal of the study.

We can only guess at the infants subjective experience of visual motion. However, given the results and previous studies of the relationship between brain activity and experience in adults with the diagnosis, it is plausible to believe that they experience it in a different way.

It is also possible that this finding is related to the perception of complex social movement, such as the interpretation of facial expressions. This is something we want to investigate in future studies.

The study is part of the larger research project EASE (Early Autism Sweden), a collaboration between Uppsala University and the Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet (KIND).

When the children were three years old, a standardized play observation was carried out with a psychologist, and based on this, each child received a score corresponding to symptoms ofautism.

The study also included acontrol groupof over 400 infants, meaning the researchers had good knowledge of how childrens brains usually react to these stimuli.

Autism cannot currently be diagnosed with good accuracy until around two to three years of age, but we hope that more knowledge about early development will enable us to make these assessments earlier in the future. This would make it easier for families to get support and hopefully individualized training sooner. It could also stimulate completely new research into early interventions.

The results of this study showed statistically significant differences between groups, but it is important to emphasize that the accuracy of the EEG measurement was too low to be able to predict the development of individual children. It is therefore too early to tell whether this method will have clinical value for early detection, for example, concludes Falck-Ytter.

Author: Press OfficeSource: Uppsala UniversityContact: Press Office Uppsala UniversityImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Global motion processing in infants visual cortex and the emergence of autism by Irzam Hardiansyah et al. Communications Biology

Abstract

Global motion processing in infants visual cortex and the emergence of autism

Autism is a heritable and common neurodevelopmental condition, with behavioural symptoms typically emerging around age 2 to 3 years. Differences in basic perceptual processes have been documented in autistic children and adults.

Specifically, data from many experiments suggest links between autism and alterations in global visual motion processing (i.e., when individual motion information is integrated to perceive an overall coherent pattern).

Yet, no study has investigated whethera distinctive organization of global motion processing precede the emergence of autistic symptoms in early childhood.

Here, using a validated infant electroencephalography (EEG) experimental paradigm, we first establish the normative activation profiles for global form, global motion, local form, and local motion in the visual cortex based on data from two samples of 5-month-old infants (totaln=473).

Further, in a sample of 5-month-olds at elevated likelihood of autism (n=52), we show that a different topographical organization of global motion processing is associated with autistic symptoms in toddlerhood.

These findings advance the understanding of neural organization of infants basic visual processing, and its role in the development of autism.

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Autism May Be Linked to Different Perceptions of Movement in Infancy - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Overwhelmed? Your Astrocytes Can Help With That – Neuroscience News

Summary: New research reveals a newly discovered brain circuit that involves astrocytes, a type of brain cell that tunes into and moderates the chatter between overactive neurons. This discovery could hold the key to treating attention disorders like ADHD, and sheds new light on how the brain processes information when overwhelmed.

Source: UCSF

A brimming inbox on Monday morning sets your head spinning. You take a moment to breathe and your mind clears enough to survey the emails one by one. This calming effect occurs thanks to a newly discovered brain circuit involving a lesser-known type of brain cell, the astrocyte.

According to new research from UC San Francisco, astrocytes tune into and moderate the chatter between overactive neurons.

This new brain circuit, described March 30, 2023 inNature Neuroscience, plays a role in modulating attention and perception, and may hold a key to treating attention disorders like ADHD that are neither well understood nor well treated, despite an abundance of research on the role of neurons.

Scientists found that noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter that can be thought of as adrenaline for the brain, sends one chemical message to neurons to be more alert, while sending another to astrocytes to quiet down the over-active neurons.

When youre startled or overwhelmed, theres so much activity going on in your brain that you cant take in any more information, saidKira Poskanzer, PhD, an assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics and senior author of the study.

Until this study, it was assumed that brain activity just quieted down with time as the amount of noradrenaline in the brain dissipated.

Weve shown that, in fact, its astrocytes pulling the handbrake and driving the brain to a more relaxed state, Poskanzer said.

A Missing Piece

Astrocytes are star-shaped cells woven between the brains neurons in a grid-like pattern. Their many star arms connect a single astrocyte to thousands of synapses, which are the connections between neurons. This arrangement positions astrocytes to eavesdrop on neurons and regulate their signals.

These cells have traditionally been thought of as simple support cells for neurons, but new research in the last decade shows that astrocytes respond to a variety of neurotransmitters and may have pivotal roles in neurologic conditions like Alzheimers disease.

Michael Reitman, PhD, first author of the paper who was a graduate student in Poskanzers lab when he did the research, wanted to know whether astrocyte activity could explain how the brain recovers from a burst of noradrenaline.

It seemed like there was a central piece missing in the explanation of how our brains recover from that acute stress, said Reitman. There are these other cells right nearby which are sensitive to noradrenaline and might help coordinate what the neurons around them are doing.

Gatekeepers of Perception

The team focused on understanding perception, or how the brain processes sensory experiences, which can be quite different depending on what state a person (or any other animal) is in at the time.

For example, if you hear thunder while cozying up indoors, the sound may seem relaxing and your brain may even tune it out. But if you hear the same sound out on a hike, your brain may become more alert and focused on safety.

These differences in our perception of a sensory stimulus happen because our brains are processing the information differently, based on the environment and state were already in, said Poskanzer, who is also a member of theKavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience.

Our team is trying to understand how this processing looks different in the brain under these different circumstances, she said.

Completing the Puzzle

To do that, Poskanzer and Reitman looked at how mice responded when given a drug that stimulates the same receptors that respond to noradrenaline. They then measured how much the mices pupils dilated and looked at brain signals in the visual cortex.

But what they found seemed counterintuitive: rather than exciting the mice, the drug relaxed them.

This result really didnt make sense, given the models we have, and that led us down the path of thinking that another cell type could be important here, Poskanzer said.

It turns out that these two things are yoked together in a feedback circuit. Given how many neurons each astrocyte can talk to, this system makes them really important and nuanced regulators of our perception.

The researchers suspect that astrocytes may play a similar role for other neurotransmitters in the brain, since being able to transition smoothly from one brain state to another is essential for survival.

We didnt expect the cycle to look like this, but it makes so much sense now, Poskanzer said. Its so elegant.

Authors:Additional authors on the paper include Vincent Tse, Drew D. Willoughby, Alba Peinado, Bat-Erdene Myagmar, and Paul C. Simpson, Jr. of UCSF, Xuelong Mi and Guoqiang Yu of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Alexander Aivazidis and Omer A. Bayraktar of the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Funding:This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R01NS099254, R01MH121446, R01MH110504) and the National Science Foundation (grant no. 1750931 and CAREER 1942360).

Author: Robin MarksSource: UCSFContact: Robin Marks UCSFImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.Norepinephrine links astrocytic activity to regulation of cortical state by Kira Poskanzer et al. Nature Neuroscience

Abstract

Norepinephrine links astrocytic activity to regulation of cortical state

Cortical state, defined by population-level neuronal activity patterns, determines sensory perception. While arousal-associated neuromodulatorsincluding norepinephrine (NE)reduce cortical synchrony, how the cortex resynchronizes remains unknown.

Furthermore, general mechanisms regulating cortical synchrony in the wake state are poorly understood. Using in vivo imaging and electrophysiology in mouse visual cortex, we describe a critical role for cortical astrocytes in circuit resynchronization.

We characterize astrocytes calcium responses to changes in behavioral arousal and NE, and show that astrocytes signal when arousal-driven neuronal activity is reduced and bi-hemispheric cortical synchrony is increased. Using in vivo pharmacology, we uncover a paradoxical, synchronizing response to Adra1a receptor stimulation.

We reconcile these results by demonstrating that astrocyte-specific deletion ofAdra1aenhances arousal-driven neuronal activity, while impairing arousal-related cortical synchrony.

Our findings demonstrate that astrocytic NE signaling acts as a distinct neuromodulatory pathway, regulating cortical state and linking arousal-associated desynchrony to cortical circuit resynchronization.

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Overwhelmed? Your Astrocytes Can Help With That - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

warm nest by ark-shelter uses neuroscience to achieve comfort – Designboom

Warm nest provides a calming environment for recovery

Ark-shelter and ARCHEKTA showcase their expertise in creating calm environments with Warm Nest, a Maggie Center in Belgium. The healthcare facility is designed to provide a comfortable setting while patients receive cancer treatment and heal. Maggie Keswick Jencks conceptualized the Maggie Center after experiencing cancer diagnosis, treatment, remission and recurrence. Her insights were valuable in pioneering a new architectural approach to cancer care. In Warm Nest each room is specifically designed to reflect the level of intimacy and the emotions that occur within.

Ark-shelter and ARCHEKTA showcase their expertise in creating calm environments with Warm Nest

images by BoysPlayNice |@boysplaynice

The design practice Ark-shelter specializes in prefabricated dwelling constructions with organic materials, dark tones and heavy glazing, exuding a sense of peace. The feelings evoked in these dwellings are what AZ Zeno wished to capture in the healing center. In the design process, Ark-Shelter teamed up with ARCHEKTA, and collaborated with a neuroscientist in order to better grasp the influence of space on the human consciousness. The task was to carefully analyze the various emotional touchpoints that occur through cancer treatment and to construct brain healthy spaces.

the healthcare facility is designed to provide a comfortable setting while patients heal

The concept for Warm Nest is a welcoming, non-intrusive space that focuses on calm gatherings, time to regain strength, and the journey to recovery. A soft ramp leads to the entrance and almost every inch of the building has views to the outdoors. The light wood interiors coupled with abundant windows removes the hospital look and feel from the facility. A comfortable courtyard provides a serene slice of nature while protecting from the wind.

Maggie Centers pioneer a new architectural approach to cancer care

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warm nest by ark-shelter uses neuroscience to achieve comfort - Designboom

Neuroscience

Learning to Love Music – Neuroscience News

Summary: Researchers report on how using music therapy can help improve social and emotional formation in children on the autism spectrum.

Source: University of Delaware

In an inviting space full of vibrant bold colors, fiber optic curtains, and a vibrating haptic chair, sounds of Row Row Row Your Boat and other popular childrens songs fill the air, and children with autism are becoming their own composers, learning to love music.

This is the scene in the Sensory Room at theRoute 9 Library and Innovation Center, where the music is theirs to alter as they see fit. When children like what they hear, they pause to listen more closely, smile, or dance. Other children focus intently as they explore the many combinations of sound available at their fingertips.

Some young listeners take delight in adding a drumbeat or fast countermelody while others seem to prefer a calmer rendition of a familiar tune. As they listen, these children learn what they like to listen to and what they dont, providing a valuable glimpse into how they respond to musical sounds.

The children are piloting a listening device developed by University of Delaware researchersDaniel Stevens, a professor ofmusic theoryin theSchool of Musicwithin theCollege of Arts and Sciences,Matthew Mauriello, assistant professor ofcomputer and information sciencesin theCollege of Engineering, and their respective students.

The professors divergent backgrounds were a complementary match for this innovative project that aims to better the lives of children with developmental disabilities.

Together, they applied for and were awarded $50,000 from the Maggie E. Neumann Health Sciences Research Fund to advance their research. The fund specifically targets interdisciplinary research and innovation that aims to improve the lives of people with disabilities.

The device is the dream of sophomore Elise Ruggiero, a double major in music performance and psychology. Her younger brother was diagnosed with autism at age 2.

I started playing violin at age 9. As I advanced in the music field and had recitals, I noticed that sitting still and listening to music was a challenge for my brother, Ruggiero said.

When wed go out to eat, if the restaurant was playing music too loudly, it would make him extremely anxious, and there wasnt much we could do about it.

In a freshman honors music theory class, Stevens tasked his students with solving a problem in the community.

I asked students: How would you like to change the world in which you live and work with your music skills? My challenge was met with stunned silence, Stevens recalled.

But students quickly got to work, reaching out to local organizations, identifying issues, and dreaming up ways to solve problems. Ruggiero used her personal experience to team up withAutism Delaware, and her idea to create an interactive music device for children with autism was ultimately selected to move forward as the class project.

It was really satisfying knowing that something I knew was a problem I wanted to tackle for so long is achievable, Ruggiero said. Seeing other people who are passionate about it too made me realize that together we can make a difference.

Music theory students in Stevens class spent hours designing various renditions of what the team has been describing as modular music thats modifiable to suit a childs listening needs and preferences.

Listeners with autism have real needs. Those with auditory sensitivities, for example, may be unable to participate in the formative experiences that children have singing songs with their parents or classmates, in part, because the music might be too fast, or it might have too much stimulation, or it might not have enough stimulation, Stevens said.

Every child with autism is different, so we need to compose music that would address various needs.

Had a device like this existed years ago, Ruggiero said it could have helped her brother.

He was turned off by the idea of making music at a young age because he was so sensitive to sound, Ruggiero said. For other kids with autism, I want them to have the option to want to make music.

Mauriello joined the project shortly after its inception to help design, build and deploy the technology in the field. Hes passionate about applying computing to challenges related to social good using his background in human-computer interaction, a blend of computer science and engineering, design, and psychology.

I enjoy opportunities to understand and empathize with users. This allows me to build technologies that meet their specific needs, Mauriello said.

With generous support from the Maggie E. Neumann Health Sciences Research Fund, the researchers transformed an idea into a prototype.

Now, a controller housed inside a white 3D-printed box with a series of presets, or light-up buttons with pictures of instruments provides a potentially infinite amount of sound combinations and aims to enhance the listening experience for children with autism.

Every time a child presses a button, the sound or melody changes, sometimes slightly, other times dramatically; each interaction is recorded so Stevens and Mauriello can gather data about listening preferences and find new ways to display this data back to composers to help them create more suitable music.

We want to understand the way children with autism hear the world and interact with music by looking at the larger patterns that start to emerge in the data, Stevens said.

Music is such a rich artform, and yet we hear it so frequently, we take for granted melody, harmony, texture, rhythm and all these elements that work together to make every listening experience enjoyable.

When it comes to listeners with autism, every sound is up for grabs. Its been really rewarding to think about how music can serve the listener.

The needs of this particular group of listeners invite us to think creatively about how sounds can be manipulated and designed to meet their needs.

Thats an area of particular interest to Simon Brugel. The sophomore computer science major, whos on the spectrum, brings personal experience to the project. He said he is sensitive to loud noises.

I dont like squeaking or alarms, Brugel said. I can notice some subtle sounds others might not notice, and I prefer some instruments over others.

Brugel helped design and write the software for the prototype and never expected to work on a project with potential for broad impact this early in his college career.

Its satisfying to know that my creations are having an impact on the community or the advancement of research, Brugel said.

By participating in this interdisciplinary research, Mauriello wants his students to understand that computing technology can serve diverse populations.

To help broaden participation in computing, we need to demonstrate that computing can have an impact on diverse problems that are facing society, Mauriello said.

This project offers a nice opportunity for that as computer science and engineering students work with music students to build something that can have a real impact on the world.

Abby Von Ohlen, a sophomore music education major, loved playing a role in this project and watching the idea blossom.

Seeing this idea come to fruition has been such a good experience, Von Ohlen said. Ive always been able to enjoy music and not be overstimulated by it. Its interesting to see that even just changing one track or sound level can affect someone. Its fulfilling to know that others will be able to enjoy music as much as I do.

Ruggiero has observed initial trials for the device and said feedback has shown the device can be engaging and might be more attractive to children if it looked more like a toy.

A parent of one of the children suggested that he might enjoy the device more if it was shaped like a fire truck that they could wheel around while listening to music, Ruggiero said. If it was more physically appealing, it might make kids more inclined to play with it.

For older children, Ruggiero envisions an app being useful.

If a teen or adult is out in public and something bothers them, they can modify it or use their own music on their phone to calm themselves, I would love that, she said.

Through working on this project, Ruggiero got a lot more than she ever dreamed of in her first year of college. She had simply hoped to meet new friends and become well-adjusted to college life.

I was not expecting to have my idea go as far as its gone. It makes me so happy and excited, she said.

Now, shes dreaming of a career in music therapy.

This project made me interested in the research aspects of music and psychology, she said. I want to work with people on the spectrum and make music more accessible to them.

Ultimately, Mauriello and Stevens said they hope the music listening device becomes a permanent fixture in the Route 9 Librarys sensory room. They also hope to incorporate the device in music and special education classes.

The research is very clear music participation is incredibly important to a childs social and emotional formation, their motor development, and their interactions with family members, other children and their community, Stevens said.

Were inspired to make formative, engaging, participatory musical experiences accessible to every child with autism in our state and beyond over time.

For more information on the project, email[emailprotected].

Maggie E. Neumann Health Sciences Research Fund was established in 2020tosupport research designed to improve health and quality of life outcomes for children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities. While the fund resides atthe College of Health Sciences, the intent is to support interdisciplinary research across all colleges.

The research fund was created with a gift from Donald J. Puglisi and Marichu C. Valencia in honor of their granddaughter, Maggie E. Neumann. Puglisi is a member of UDs Board of Trustees and they both serve on the Presidents Leadership Council.

Author: Marina AffoSource: University of DelawareContact: Marina Affo University of DelawareImage: The image is credited to Ashley Barnas/University of Delaware

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Learning to Love Music - Neuroscience News