1985 — 1990 |
Wood, Frank Balch |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Behavioral and Rcbf Studies of Memory in Psychopathology
Memory functioning will be studied--by both behavioral and regional cerebral blood flow techniques--in 60 schizophrenics, 60 major depressives, 120 inpatient controls, and 120 non-patient controls. The behavioral techniques include previously validated tests of verbal memory for structured narrative prose; visual memory for a structured geometric figure; and rote learning, free recall, and recognition of a list of unrelated common words. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised and selected other discrete neuropsychological tests are also given as control tests. The regional cerebral blood flow technique measures gray matter flow at 16 locations during a resting baseline, during learning of a world list, and during recognition of that list. The design and data analysis are intended to provide a cross-disciplinary test of the hypothesis that schizophrenia and depression have differential verbal memory and visual memory deficits, respectively, but that both have a similar deficit in initial attention or registration for memory. These hypotheses address major theories of the etiology and phenomenology of these disorders, with implications for treatment as well as diagnosis. An important additional outcome--valuable in its own right--is the characterization of a normal control group, stratified by age, education, sex, and hospitalization experience. This will permit a much wider and more accurate use--in many research and clinical settings--of the behavioral and blood flow tests used in this proposal.
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1 |
1986 — 1998 |
Wood, Frank Balch |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Neurobehavioral Definition and Subtyping of Dyslexia
A center for definition and subtyping is proposed, with the following specific features: - longitudinal studies of educational and psychometric performance of a large sample of school children, to define and subtype dyslexia by outcome with careful control for the presence of attention deficit disorder (ADD) using tests already validated for separate effects of dyslexia and ADD; - a randomized experimental vs. control trial of remediation in the first and second grade, for children at high risk for dyslexia; - a full psychometric, neuropsychiatric, and regional cerebral blood flow investigation of a large sample of adult dyslexics whose childhood educational and psychometric performance is well-documented in archival records; and of their own children, permitting a two generation study where ascertainment is by affected parent; - electrophysiological event-related potential (ERP) measures, using paradigms already validated for separate effects of dyslexia and ADD.
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1 |
1992 — 1994 |
Wood, Frank Balch |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Child and Parent Add--Brain Function and Psychopathology
A cohort of 108 unreferred, randomly selected elementary school students, diagnosed in the first grade for presence or absence of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and its constituent symptoms of inattention and impulsivity, will be followed up in seventh and eighth grade. Psychopathological, neuropsychological, and electrophysiological measurements will be made at this time to determine: (a) the degree to which a first grade diagnosis of ADD is reliable or persistent until seventh and eighth grade; (b) what abnormalities persist -- in the above measurement domains -- from first grade symptoms of ADD; and (c) the differential role of first grade inattention and impulsivity in the prediction of seventh and eighth grade abnormalities. Parents of the above probands will be measured in the same domains, with the addition of regional cerebral blood flow measurements during mnestic and selective attention task performance. The parent data will be used: (a) for the definition of child-parent correlations in the symptoms and measured manifestations of ADD, leading to the formulation and test of genetic hypotheses; and (b) for cross-validation of neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and regional cerebral blood measurements within the parent sample.
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1 |
1999 — 2003 |
Wood, Frank Balch |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Genotypic and Phenotypic Heterogeneity in Dyslexia @ Wake Forest University Health Sciences
Continuation is proposed for three highly interrelated projects: (a) a longitudinal behavioral study of normal, reading impaired, and "at risk" samples which had been started in 1st grade, third grade, and kindergarten, respectively; (b) a family study of adult dyslexics (defined by childhood psychometrics), including their spouses, siblings, parents, and children, and using behavioral measurement of the phenotype for all subjects and electrophysiological measurement of the phenotype for probands and their children; and (c) an integrated multidimensional physiological and anatomical study of the dyslexic phenotype---using blood flow (rCBF), event related potentials (ERP), positron emission tomography (PET), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These studies are intended to clarify: (a) the longitudinal course of normal and impaired reading, and the differentiation of these courses from each other, including the demonstration of phenotypic markers of emerging dyslexia distinct from attention deficit disorder, low intelligence, and related conditions, and the possible intra-linguistic subtyping of the dyslexic phenotype; (b) the familial transmission patterns of the phenotype and its component processes and related comorbid disorders such as ADHD. (c) converging evidence for an anatomical (temporal planum; and physiological (left temporal, left angular gyrus, left caudate) deficit as characterizing the dyslexic phenotype.
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0.96 |
1999 — 2002 |
Wood, Frank Balch |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Regional Brain Metabolism Studies
In the first five years of this funded project, physiological studies using regional cerebral blood flow, event-related potentials, and positron emission tomography have separately suggested alterations of neural organization, particularly in the left hemisphere, in dyslexic individuals. The current proposal aims to unify the ERP and PET physiological methods as well as MRI profiles into an integrated anatomical and behavioral description of the neurobehavioral substrate of dyslexia. Accordingly, physiological measurements would be made during the performance of cognitive tasks chosen to elicit specific, localized regions of activation. In three groups of subjects (dyslexics and normal readers) with well-documented childhood reading data, four tasks will be measured across these methods. In Experiment 1, a group of 10 will perform two auditory linguistic activation tasks during PET scanning. In Experiment 2, a group of 40 will perform crossmodal linguistic activation tasks during simultaneouS PET and ERP measurement. MR images on all PET scan participants will allow reconstruction and measurement of the temporal plana and caudates to determine the anatomical characterization of dyslexia. In Experiment 3, another group of 40 will perform visual letter and word discrimination paradigms, again during simultaneouS ERP and PET measurement, with MR images for anatomical reconstruction. In Experiment 4, 100 subjects varying in reading disability, their spouses, and 150 of their children will undergo event-related potential measurement during various visual tasks, allowing direct comparison to their parent data as well as to the childhood longitudinal normal, reading impaired, and at-risk samples collected in the first five years of our current program project. We will specifically test the hypothesis of a unitary, underlying physiological deficit manifest in each of these physiological measurement domains.
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1 |
2002 — 2006 |
Wood, Frank Balch |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Young Adult Literacy Problems: Prevalence and Treatment @ Wake Forest University Health Sciences
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Functional illiteracy in the young adult population (ages 18 to 25) is not only a drain on the nation's economic productivity; it is also documented as a major obstacle to adequate health care and a major independent risk factor for depression and suicide. The proposed research, responsive to an NIH request for applications, has two major phases (1) determine the prevalence of poor reading skills in the young adult population; and (2) compare treatment regimes for efficacy. The latter is accomplished by a design that will permit the isolation of effective types of instruction in four areas known to be crucial to reading in children, and suspected to be so in adults; (a) phonological decoding (sounding out words), (b) fluency (i.e., automatic "translation" from the letter code to the sound code and ultimately to the meaning; (c) vocabulary; and (d) text comprehension. It is expected that the different types of instruction will be differentially effective for persons with different skill profiles of strength and weakness.
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0.96 |