Colleagues:

* Autism Consortium

* Yale Child Study Center

Collaborators:

* Developmental Medicine Center, Children's Hospital Boston

The Developmental Medicine Center (DMC) at Children's Hospital-Boston was organized in 1996 under the direction of Leonard Rappaport MD, MS, and Janice Ware, Ph.D.  Three long standing clinical centers were merged to improve the clinical care of, education about and research regarding developmental and behavioral issues and to improve the lives of the children and families facing these issues.

The DMC currently provides diagnostic services, medical and behavioral treatment and follow up for over 1,500 new children and their families each year.  In addition, there are more than 5,500 follow-up visits.
The most commonly seen diagnosis in these children include learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, autism spectrum disorders, other developmental problems and the management of the complex medical problems that sometimes accompany these developmental issues.

* Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Children's Hospital Boston

The Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience is directed by Charles A. Nelson, Ph.D., the Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research in the Developmental Medicine Center at Children's Hospital Boston. Prior to joining the Harvard/Children's Hospital faculty, Dr. Nelson served as the Distinguished McKnight University professor and the Nancy M. and John E. Lindahl, Professor of Child Psychology, Pediatrics and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota. He also served as co-director of the Center of Neurobehavioral Development at the University of Minnesota. The Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience is made up of a talented group of graduate and undergraduate students, post-doctoral fellows and medical researchers, and a wonderful staff who span many fields of study from child development to neuroscience to developmental pediatrics.  
 
With joint collaborations around the world (currently the lab is involved in projects in Romania, Italy, England, Quebec, and Chile), the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience has been a pioneer in brain and cognition research in infants, children, and adults since its start. (If you wish to see a brief description of some of the work conducted in the lab, see the August 15, 2005 issue of Newsweek magazine, where the cover photo and the photo on pages 32-33 was of one of our study participants.) Of particular mention is our work with event-related potentials (ERPs) in infants, which is perhaps the centerpiece of our research here at the lab. We are currently conducting several studies concentrating on memory and the development of face perception. A long-range goal of the lab is to determine the where and the how of both memory and face/object recognition in the brain. Some of the questions that we are currently studying include: How do babies and children process faces and how does memory develop? Do these processes change as they grow older? How does experience play a role in these changes? 

Our work is not confined just to infants who are developing normally. We are also conducting research on several populations of infants and children who are either at risk for falling off a typical developmental pattern (e.g., those who are very premature, or whose mothers suffered from diabetes during pregnancy) or who have already been diagnosed as not developing in a typical fashion.  
 
These issues are being addressed through the use of new technologies designed to explore the relation between electrical activity produced by the brain, brain structure, brain function, and cognitive processes. Ultimately we hope to use these techniques to investigate a range of normative and related clinical phenomena.

* National Centre for Biological Sciences, India

Dr. Sumantra Chattarji and Shankaranarayana Rao are collaborating with Susumu Tonegawa's research team.

* Treatment Research and NeuroSCience Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (TRANSCEND)

TRANSCEND, based at the Center for Child and Adolescent Development at Cambridge Health Alliance, Harvard Medical School, and utilizing the imaging facilities of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging of Massachusetts General Hospital-Charlestown, is a collaborative network of similarly thinking researchers who are linking their efforts in a common framework to unite measures across multiple levels including brain structure (MRI), brain function (EEG, MEG, fMRI), metabolism (metabolomics, biochemistry, immunology, toxic body burden) along with genetic and behavioral measures.

Our program is based on the model that by coordinating and integrating
FUNCTIONAL as well as STRUCTURAL MEASURES across BIOLOGICAL and COGNITIVE levels while investigating processes of change, improvement and recovery, the full potential of TRANSLATIONAL research can be achieved for neurodevelopmental disorders.

* University of Sydney, Australia

Catherine Leamey, Ph.D., is collaborating with Mriganka Sur's research team.