John Colombo, Ph.D. - US grants

behavioral habituation /sensitization; infant human (0-1 year); memory; longitudinal human study;

Although the concept that sensitivity to the contingency between behavior and their consequences and the adeptness of the acquisition of operant control over the environment is central to many theories of psychological development, there has been literally no research on infant learning which has approached the topic from the standpoint of individual differences. The proposal describes a paradigm for the assessment of the stability of individual differences on these aspects of learning across both short- and longer-term time periods. The proposed studies provide a good first step toward the investigation of individual differences in infant learning and their potential meaning for later developmental outcome. The application proposes to study two samples of infants. One sample will include 90 infants from three different age groups (3, 6, and 9 month-olds) who will be tested twice within a period of 2 weeks in order to determine the within-age test-retest reliability of traditional measures of learning. A second sample of 30 infants will be tested once each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age in order to establish the longer-term stability of these measures across periods of major behavioral change in the first year of life. A second set of analyses are also proposed on these data to test the relationships between measures of individual response acquisition, extinction, and attention to the reinforcement/contingency, and the effects of repeated conditioning-extinction cycles of subsequent conditioning performance. Normative analyses of these measures will also be available from the data, and the overlap of the two samples in the design allows for independent replication of the effects tested for throughout the study.

Individual differences in infants' duration of fixations to visual stimuli is a reliable and stable measure of attention that correlates with concurrent measures of learning, memory, and discrimination. Furthermore, this measure has been shown to be predictive of later intelligence during childhood; infants with longer patterns of fixation typically score lower on subsequent standardized tests of language, achievement, and intellectual status. The precise mechanism responsible for this prediction is currently unknown. Data indicate that long looking infants' performance deficits may be attributable to slower information processing, but once again, the mechanisms that underlie these differences in speed are uncertain. The present application tests the possibility that the reason why long lookers are slower in the processing of information than short lookers is that they use different strategies for visual intake. Seven experiments are proposed with 3- and 4-month-old human infants that are designed to determine whether short looking infants process in a mature and efficient global-to-local (i.e., overall-to-detail) analysis of visual information, while long looking infants process in a less efficient and more laborious local visual analysis (i.e., visual stimuli processed from the levels of their detail). Such differences would-account for differences observed in apparent processing speed of the two groups. Furthermore,. local visual analysis is an effortful and disadvantageous method for visual intake and would put individuals who use it at risk for later cognitive deficits, including those observed in poor readers. The present set of studies examines this hypothesis by testing long and short lookers' responses to global and local visual information in the following cognitive dimensions: sensitivity, dominance, long-term memory, generalization, and abstraction from symmetrical and partially degraded stimuli. In addition to studying the proposed global-local hypothesis, the studies are also designed to investigate simple quantitative differences between these two groups of infants.

Over the past decade, measures of cognitive performance in infancy have been shown to be correlated with cognitive status in childhood and adolescence. Although these measures of attention and recognition memory predict later cognitive status over and above that provided by more traditional sensorimotor infant tests, the absolute level of prediction remains modest. The present application proposes to study the predictive validity of look duration during an infant-controlled visual habituation paradigms, and of novelty preferences assessed after habituation. The investigators propose to assess these variables repeatedly from 3 to 9 months. The inclusion of repeated assessments of look duration will allow for the test of hypothesis that data on the course of developmental change in look duration across that period will (a) increase the predictive validity of the measure over similar measures that have been taken only once or twice during infancy, and (b) provide insight as to the independence of underlying mechanisms or processes that may contribute to this prediction. In addition, heart rate will be measured concurrently with infants' looking during these sessions in order to (a) provide independent evaluation of infants' active engagement/attention in the paradigm, and (b) determine the predictive validity of different phases of infant attention that have been shown to occur during infants looking to visual stimuli. Finally, at each infant assessment, novelty preference will be assessed in a paired-comparison test following habituation. Infant novelty preferences have been shown to be predictive of cognitive outcome in a number of studies over the last decade, but it is not clear whether such prediction is carried by the infant's facility in stimulus encoding, or by the recognition memory components that contribute to the response. The assessment of novelty preference after all subjects have been visually habituated to stimuli theoretically equates for individual differences in encoding, and thus allows us to examine the predictive validity of novelty preferences under conditions where encoding processes are dissociated from memory processes.

The perception and processing of time is a critical aspect of human experience in many domains. It has long been investigated within theories of learning, but it has also been demonstrated to be relevant to more complex cognitive abilities, and its study has been linked recently with both developmental disabilities and enhancing our knowledge of brain function. Time perception has been specifically investigated in children, but to this point, we know very little about how time is perceived or processed during human infancy. However, a recent study with innovative methodologies monitored infants' heart rate while they were presented with a visual stimulus sequence in a predictable on-off pattern. After several repetitions of these patterns, the stimulus was omitted., and infants showed a slowing (deceleration) of the heartbeat. The timing of when that deceleration occurred suggested when the infants expected the stimulus to reappear, and the timing of that heart rate response indicated that human infants show an extraordinarily precise sense of time. The studies supported by this grant award use this basic procedure to conduct a series of four experiments on the sense of time in 4- and 9-month-old infants. The first experiment examines whether infants can accurately perceive regular time intervals of different lengths. The second examines how infants respond to time intervals that are variable. The third studies whether infants can form simple rules about whether time intervals increase or decrease. Finally, the fourth study examines the degree to which distracting infants' attention affects their sense of time.

The perception and processing of time is a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Philosophers such as Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein have pondered its significance to human experience, and it should come as no surprise that the perception of time has been an important topic within the psychology as well. Time perception is critical to learning, given that the elapsed time between events in our environment governs whether the brain will associate those events. Thus, the study of how we process time will illuminate a number of basic human abilities, such as our learning of language, our linking causes with effects, and our perception and judgments during social interactions.

Learning from Dynamic Visual Displays

This Science of Learning Center Catalyst research project will establish a multidisciplinary research center at the University of Kansas to study fundamental issues in human learning. The project will draw on the expertise of cognitive scientists, natural scientists and education specialists who will explore how people comprehend visual displays and representations. Using a variety of learning tools and supportive environments that have been developed by the KU Center for Research on Learning and the KU Center for Science Education, this SLC catalyst project will focus on the study of specific classes of visual representations including maps, online animations and animated graphics, and virtual three-dimensional environments.

The objectives of this research include building a broad ranging, inter-institutional research team that will initiate in-depth study of the connection between visual stimulus and learning from a variety of dynamic visual displays. The research team will integrate approaches from human perception, cognitive science, education, and information technology systems to investigate how humans extract, apprehend, and store information from complex graphical and dynamic visual displays. Pilot studies will examine how eye motion is linked to processes of obtaining and interpreting information from static displays (maps, graphs and charts), and dynamic visual displays (animations). Understanding how humans acquire information from visual displays, how the mind processes that information, and how humans progress from unskilled interpreters of visual information to experts, will guide the research team in the improvement of these visual displays so that they more effectively support learning.

We anticipate that outcomes of this research program will improve the design of visual displays used for learning. We expect these improvements to provide:

-New instructional strategies for sharing organizational knowledge
-Software that better supports the development of virtual working and learning environments,
-Continuity in the transfer of knowledge capital in government, business and education,
-Tools to support knowledge generation, rather than knowledge hoarding, as a pathway to economic growth and workforce development,
-Reduced cycle time in problem resolution, product development and the dissemination of information, and
-More effective strategies for online learning assessments.

Abstract The Participant Recruitment and Management Core, consisting of a full-time Coordinator and a parttime research assistant and guided by the Core Director, was designed from the ground up to provide services to assist center investigators in the following ways: (1) The identification and recruitment of participants, (2) Management of contacts with participants in existing studies, and (3) Provide training in human subjects and act as a liaison between investigators, the local institutional review board (IRB) and human subject consortiums. PARC has established the necessary infrastructure to meet these aims. Specifically, PARC has designed a number of databases geared towards targeting households for recruitment and keeping track of individuals'participation in Center projects, as well as a database of regional organizations that can assist in participant recruitment either as recruitment sites or as resources for targeting likely participants. PARC also assists Center investigators'recruitment efforts by providing demography services to target specific geographical areas that would result in more efficient recruiting. Furthermore, PARC maintains regular contact with past participants through regular newsletter and birthday card mailings, and is able to employ a number of tracking methods to find "lost" households, thus maximizing participant retention. Finally, the Core brings together Center investigators and staff for workshops on current participant targeting and recruitment strategies and the latest developments in human subject policies. These specialized services are often not fundable through R01 mechanisms and are not provided elsewhere. For the future, the Core plans to expand its current aims outlined above to include: 1) Greater integration with the Digital and Electrical Engineering and Analytic Techniques and Technology Cores of the Center, 2) Improved investigator access to PARC resources and services, 3) Contributions to the scholarship of participant recruitment and retention, and 4) Tailoring of PARC services to clinical trials/translational research.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project proposes a study of the circadian rhythms of cortisol and alpha-amylase and their relationship to tonic pupil size in two to five year old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The aim of the current application is to explore non-invasive measures of both the hypothalamic and norepinephrine systems to determine their involvement in producing atypical autonomic responses in children with autism. In addition, this proposal seeks to determine whether such measures could provide insight into potential neural impairment in autism, and if these measures could eventually be used to identify the disorder early in life. The tasks include measurement of (a) pupil size at rest, and (b) daytime variations in salivary measures of cortisol and alpha-amylase across two days. Atypical baseline levels of autonomic activity and sleep difficulties have been previously reported in persons with autism and indicate a heightened level of sympathetic activity. However, pupillary responses have been found to be more reliable and less influenced by noise than other autonomic measures such as heart rate. In addition, pupil size has recently been found to be larger at rest and smaller to human faces in two to five year old children with autism than controls. Both the hypothalamic and norepinephrine systems contribute to the control of the autonomic nervous system and help to maintain appropriate levels of alertness to prepare the CNS to respond to incoming information. Persons with autism have been found to have heightened levels of norepinephrine and lower levels of cortisol, but these responses have been suggested to be atypical due to heightened stress associated with blood draw. Therefore, measurement of the salivary correlates of the norepinephrine and hypothalamic systems, alpha-amylase and cortisol respectively, provide a non-invasive measure of these systems. Pilot data are presented that show the discriminant ability of the measurement of alpha-amylase throughout the waking state. These measures will be taken on two separate days on a group of 20 children with a diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder, 20 children with Down Syndrome, and 20 typically-developing children. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project seeks to determine the neurochemical systems involved in producing the atypical autonomic responses in autism, and thus provides two potential contributions to public health. First, the autonomic and salivary measures could provide potential early markers of autism, as these non-invasive measures could be used during infancy to determine the probability of developing the disorder. Second, determination of the neurochemical component responsible for atypical autonomic responses could lead to identification of a neural impairment in autism that is potentially primary to other impairments, and could lead to pharmacological and/or behavioral interventions targeted at preventing this impairment from causing a cascade of effects.

Core Support for five years is requested for the competitive renewal of the Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (MRDDRC). The Kansas MRDDRC, now in its 39th year, has played a major international role in generating highly effective behavioral interventions aimed at the causes, prevention, and treatment of mental retardation and related secondary conditions, and in delineating basic knowledge of the underlying biology of typical and atypical development. Since its inception, the center has supported a balanced portfolio of behavioral and biological research. Building on this rich history, a unique contribution of the center in the future will be the development of biologically informed behavioral and pharmacological intervention and treatment approaches. The mission of the Kansas MRDDRC is to support high quality basic and applied research relevant to the causes and prevention of mental retardation and the prevention and remediation of associated secondary conditions and related developmental disabilities. To achieve this mission, the Kansas MRDDRC is designed to accomplish three objectives. First, to develop and support new interdisciplinary basic and applied research initiatives directly relevant to the center's mission, bringing together scientists across the Kansas Center as well as promoting collaborative ventures with researchers at other institutions. Second, to provide cost-effective, scientifically generative, state of the art core services, resources, and facilities that directly enhance the quality and impact of science produced by center investigators and their collaborators. Third, to provide highly efficient, cost-effective systems for planning, developing, managing, coordinating, and disseminating research activities associated with the center. The Kansas MRDDRC's research program is organized around four integrated thematic areas that each reflects a general topic central to MRDD as well as the scientific directions and strengths of our current efforts. These themes are: 1) language, communication, and cognition of mental retardation;2) risk, prevention, and intervention in mental retardation;3) neurobiology of mental retardation;4) cellular and molecular biology of early development. To coordinate and support the research activities of the 76 investigators and 75 research projects associated with these themes, four core units are proposed: a) Communication and Administration;b) Biobehavioral Measurement;c) Research Design and Analysis;d) Integrative Imaging.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Core Support for five years is requested for the competitive renewal of the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC). The KIDDRC, now in its 44th year, has played a major international role in generating highly effective biobehavioral interventions aimed at the causes, prevention, and treatment of intellectual and developmental disabilities and related secondary conditions, and in delineating basic knowledge of the underlying biology of typical and atypical development. Since its inception, the Center has supported a balanced portfolio of behavioral, biological, and biobehavioral research. Building on its rich history, a unique contribution of the Center in the future will be the development of biologically-informed interventions and treatments. The mission of the KIDDRC is to support high quality basic and applied research relevant to the causes and prevention of intellectual and developmental disabilities and the prevention and remediation of associated secondary conditions. To achieve this mission, the KIDDRC is designed to accomplish three objectives. First, to develop and support new interdisciplinary basic and applied research initiatives directly relevant to the Center's mission, bringing together scientists across the Kansas Center as well as promoting collaborative ventures with researchers at other institutions. Second, to provide cost-effective, scientifically generative, state of the art core services, resources, and facilities that directly enhance the quality and impact of science produced by center investigators and their collaborators. Third, to provide highly efficient, cost-effective systems for planning, developing, managing, coordinating, and disseminating research activities associated with the center. The KIDDRC's research program is organized around four integrated thematic areas that each reflects a topic of central importance to IDD, comports with our scientific directions, and draws upon our research strengths. These themes are: 1) language, communication, and cognition of IDD; 2) risk, prevention, and intervention in IDD; 3) neurobiology of IDD; 4) cellular and molecular biology of early development. To coordinate and support the research activities of the 84 investigators and co-investigators and 88 research projects associated with these themes, four core units are proposed: a) Communication and Administration; b) Biobehavioral Measurement; c) Research Design and Analysis; d) Integrative Imaging.

There are two major facets to the CAC. The communication component creates, fuels, and sustains open communicafion lines within the center and beyond, using tools that include newsletters, websites, arranging public venues, scientific events, meeting documentation, press releases, etc. The CAC performs the essenfial role of communicating, coordinating and integrating services and functions across our three physical locations (KU-L, KUMC, and Juniper Gardens). The CAC leadership, in conjunction with our Theme Leaders, also identifies research areas ripe for development and communicates with investigators to encourage new collaborations. The CAC actively seeks opinions of its members to identify needs and determine directions that the KIDDRC may pursue. The administrative side seeks to free investigators from as many financial, administrative, and clerical tasks as possible while providing integrative infrastructure that assures maximal efficiency in deploying Center resources. It provides an integrated array of research management services, including identifying funding opportunities, grant application preparafion, compliance assurance, award management, personnel management, purchasing and grant accounting/ Since the KIDDRC occupies dedicated space at 3 sites, these activities do not duplicate efforts of other administrative units. The CAC is responsible for the day to day maintenance and operation of our requisition management and billing system, ReqMan, which provides an efficient and innovative mechanism for cost recovery and service tracking. These two facets are linked by the joint leadership provided by the Director and Co-Director, working in a coordinated manner with the CAC Manager and staff, User Advisory Committee, the Scientific Directors and Managers of the 3 scientific Cores, and the Theme Leaders. Through informed leadership, the KIDDRC maximizes its impact by responding quickly and efficiently to changing needs in these dynamic times. As it has over the years, the CAC will continue to change and evolve, leveraging its resources to gain institutional support in the forms of physical resources, staff and faculty support, and programmatic support. In the coming funding period, we will maintain or increase staff and expand services while steadily reducing the proportion of KIDDRC budget supporting the CAC.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application seeks to renew project R01 HD047315, which supported the conduct of a randomized clinical trial of a high level of supplementation of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) during the prenatal period (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT00266825). We achieved the enrollment and follow-up goals of the original RCT and, most importantly for the current proposal, we have retained the planned large cohort of children born to women enrolled in the parent trial. Infants enrolled and followed to 18 months of age in this trial are now entering a particularly important period of cognitive and intellectual development, and the successful retention of the current sample allows for an unprecedented opportunity to determine if prenatal supplementation of DHA affects preschool and school-age outcomes that predict successful school performance and adaptive behaviors. The different skills that emerge at these ages build on early components of cognition, which have been positively associated with higher DHA status in both observational studies and clinical trials. We propose to test these infants on a semi-annual basis from 24 through 72 months of age employing outcomes that assess four domains of development that are critical to health, adjustment, and well-being through adulthood: (a) higher-order cognition (memory, attention, and executive function), (b) language processing and preliteracy skills, (c) adaptive regulation (self-regulation skills related to behavioral problems, school performance, and child psychopathology), and (d) intelligence. The proposed assessments will allow us to determine whether prenatal nutritional supplementation with DHA affects child health and development. The findings could contribute to evidence-based policy on prenatal nutrition. In addition, the evidence from this renewal would address hypotheses concerning fetal programming and human behavior that are currently at the forefront within the field of health, development and nutrition.

The Clinical Translational Core (CTC) of the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC) seeks to directly serve and facilitate translational research functions within its portfolio of projects. The CTC is designed to meet the needs of the work in those research themes by centralizing, integrating, and standardizing a set of functions that will allow KIDDRC projects to recruit well-characterized participants for its portfolio of human translational studies in an efficient manner. While these services will facilitate work by investigators already conducting research with human participants, they will also be extremely valuable to basic scientists who have not previously conducted research with human populations, as they provide a means for identifying individuals with Fragile X, Prader-Willi, and Rett Syndromes as well as capacity for the deep phenotyping required for supporting research on IDD subtypes and rare disorders. The objective of the CTC is to provide high-quality, cost-effective support to KIDDRC research programs in the recruitment of well-characterized participants with IDD and controls. Given the KIDDRC portfolio, the CTC emphasizes recruiting pediatric samples, but we also provide capacity to recruit adults with IDD. To achieve this, the CTC has established the goal of providing KIDDRC PIs with greater access to potential participants and with ongoing support with tools to facilitate recruitment and retention of individuals with IDD into their studies. This objective is being met in several ways. First, the CTC will provide KIDDRC investigators with access and assistance in identifying potential research participants through four registries: (1) an integrated data repository linked to electronic health records at KUMC, as well as to other regional databases that access records of individuals with IDD; (2) continuing to build a registry based on a regional clinic to which children are referred for a potential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or developmental delays (this registry will be integrated with the KUMC repository); (3) a registry of facilities that house, advocate for, or otherwise serve individuals with IDD across Kansas and 14 other states derived from a partnership with the Kansas University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD); and (4) centralization and maintenance of a registry containing information on typically-developing (TD) infants and children that has been used to support normative research on developmental science. The core will also provide support for investigators needing assistance with human behavioral phenotyping of IDD conditions, by assisting investigators with establishing and maintaining partnerships with school districts in Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka corridor, and by sponsoring investigators? presence and visibility at community and commercial events targeted to specific populations and age groups.  

The Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Center (KIDDRC) supports rigorous and high-impact basic and applied research within themes that are relevant to the etiology, identification, prevention, and treatment of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The Center is organized around projects that fall into four basic themes: (1) Language, Communication Disorders, and Cognition, (2) Risk, Intervention, and Prevention, (3) The Neurobiology of IDD, and (4) Cellular and Molecular Biology of Early Development. To achieve its mission, the KIDDRC seeks to develop new interdisciplinary research initiatives relevant to the Center?s mission by bringing together scientists across the various sites of the Kansas Center as well as promoting collaboration with researchers at other institutions. It supports existing and new projects with cost- effective, scientifically generative, state-of-the-art core services, resources, and facilities that directly enhance the quality, quantity, and impact of science produced by center investigators and their collaborators, and to provide highly efficient, cost-effective systems for planning, developing, managing, coordinating, and disseminating research activities associated with the center. The KIDDRC proposes to operate five Cores in support of its projects. An Administrative Core coordinates and integrates services and functions across the three physical locations of the KIDDRC in Lawrence and Kansas City and provides scientific leadership and governance mechanisms to ensure that scientific cores are current and efficiently run. A Clinical Translational Core provides KIDDRC investigators with several tools for enhancing translational research, addressed broadly by facilitating contact with individuals with IDD for research. A Preclinical Models Core facilitates translational applications by assisting in the development of cellular and organismal models of IDD. This is done by providing infrastructure and resources needed to create and characterize laboratory models of IDD and by extending KIDDRC?s prior capabilities for analyzing behavior, anatomy, physiology, and gene expression. This latter goal includes cutting-edge genome editing technologies to aid in generating cellular models using patient?derived cells. A Clinical Outcomes/Biobehavioral Technology Core provides high-quality, cost-effective support to KIDDRC research programs requiring quantitative measurement of human neurobehavioral and behavioral outcomes, as well as biological correlates. The CBC includes tools for the generating, collecting, automating, and validating such measures. The fifth core is a Research Design and Analysis Core (RDAC), which supports the analysis of data from both preclinical and clinical research through state-of-the-art statistical and bioinformatics methods. Finally, a Research Component housed within the KIDDRC seeks to evaluate the efficacy of multimodal intervention for language in a group of children with autism and minimal verbal skills by comparing results from an experimental intervention to a treatment-as- usual condition, and compare two intensities of the multimodal intervention.  

The Administrative Core (AC) of the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC) is central to the function of the center and its portfolio of projects. It provides well-regarded, proactive, visionary scientific and administrative leadership, an organizational infrastructure that facilitates research and core enterprises, and it maintains communications necessary to ensure a singular identity that helps sustain center-ness of the KIDDRC. It ensures that institutional resources necessary for programmatic advancement are available. It provides a means for the IDD research community to speak with a single voice with other facets of the University and with the community at large. In addition, the Administrative Core provides a means for proactive initiation and rapid reactions in response to opportunities and challenges. The key functions of the AC are to identify, develop, and promote interdisciplinary and translational research that is directly relevant to the KIDDRC?s mission. This includes promoting collaboration among investigators on problems related to intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), recruiting new investigators to IDD research, procuring resources and technologies necessary to advance existing research programs, and promoting collaborative ventures with researchers at other institutions. This is accomplished by the establishment, coordination, maintenance, and oversight of cost-effective, generative, state-of-the-art services, resources, and facilities that directly enhance the quality and impact of the science and scientific products generated by KIDDRC investigators and their collaborators. During its 50-year history, the KIDDRC has existed across three physical locations: the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies on the University of Kansas Lawrence campus, the RL Smith Center at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, and the Juniper Gardens Children?s Project (also in Kansas City); this makes the role of the AC is especially important for coordination, communication, and integration of services and functions across multiple sites. The managerial side of the Core also seeks to free investigators from as many financial, administrative, and clerical tasks as possible, while assuring maximal efficiency in the deployment of Center resources. The crucial link between the programmatic and managerial sides of the AC is provided jointly by the Director and Co-Director working in a coordinated manner with the Administrative Manager as well as the Scientific Directors and Managers of the four scientific Cores. 

The Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Center (KIDDRC) supports rigorous and high-impact basic and applied research within themes that are relevant to the etiology, identification, prevention, and treatment of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The Center is organized around projects that fall into four basic themes: (1) Language, Communication Disorders, and Cognition, (2) Risk, Intervention, and Prevention, (3) The Neurobiology of IDD, and (4) Cellular and Molecular Biology of Early Development. To achieve its mission, the KIDDRC seeks to develop new interdisciplinary research initiatives relevant to the Center?s mission by bringing together scientists across the various sites of the Kansas Center as well as promoting collaboration with researchers at other institutions. It supports existing and new projects with cost- effective, scientifically generative, state-of-the-art core services, resources, and facilities that directly enhance the quality, quantity, and impact of science produced by center investigators and their collaborators, and to provide highly efficient, cost-effective systems for planning, developing, managing, coordinating, and disseminating research activities associated with the center. The KIDDRC proposes to operate five Cores in support of its projects. An Administrative Core coordinates and integrates services and functions across the three physical locations of the KIDDRC in Lawrence and Kansas City and provides scientific leadership and governance mechanisms to ensure that scientific cores are current and efficiently run. A Clinical Translational Core provides KIDDRC investigators with several tools for enhancing translational research, addressed broadly by facilitating contact with individuals with IDD for research. A Preclinical Models Core facilitates translational applications by assisting in the development of cellular and organismal models of IDD. This is done by providing infrastructure and resources needed to create and characterize laboratory models of IDD and by extending KIDDRC?s prior capabilities for analyzing behavior, anatomy, physiology, and gene expression. This latter goal includes cutting-edge genome editing technologies to aid in generating cellular models using patient?derived cells. A Clinical Outcomes/Biobehavioral Technology Core provides high-quality, cost-effective support to KIDDRC research programs requiring quantitative measurement of human neurobehavioral and behavioral outcomes, as well as biological correlates. The CBC includes tools for the generating, collecting, automating, and validating such measures. The fifth core is a Research Design and Analysis Core (RDAC), which supports the analysis of data from both preclinical and clinical research through state-of-the-art statistical and bioinformatics methods. Finally, a Research Component housed within the KIDDRC seeks to evaluate the efficacy of multimodal intervention for language in a group of children with autism and minimal verbal skills by comparing results from an experimental intervention to a treatment-as- usual condition, and compare two intensities of the multimodal intervention.  

The Gatlinburg Conference on Research in ID/DD is an annual scientific meeting designed to advance translational biobehavioral research on intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The meeting provides a forum for investigators at all career stages to present and discuss cutting-edge biobehavioral research and theory. The conference focuses on communicating state-of-the-art advances in our understanding of the causes and consequences of various disorders involving intellectual disability, as well as to reveal new interventions designed to ameliorate specific disorders. Each year?s conference has a scientific theme that is explored through plenary lectures, although symposia or poster sessions address a broad range of topics on IDD from basic to translational and applied science. The themes are designed to expose participants to theoretical frameworks, methods, and findings from other disciplines and fields of study, including from basic and translational neuroscience, as well as fields focused on cultural influences on development and IDD. Historically, the specific aims of the Gatlinburg Conference have been to (a) promote the exchange of scientific findings, theoretical perspectives, and methodological innovations and thereby accelerate, and encourage innovation in, translational research on IDD, (b) facilitate collaborative interdisciplinary research on IDD, (c) ensure that biobehavioral scientists are exposed to relevant translational and basic science findings, methods, and perspectives from neurobiology and medicine, thereby enriching their research and further supporting interdisciplinarity, and (d) serve as an interdisciplinary training and career development resource for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career faculty. More recently the aims have been modified to include goals to increase the diversity of the IDD research community by supporting the development of early career scientists from under-represented groups. These successful aims are largely unchanged from the previously funded application; however, the current proposal includes several innovations related to communication of science to nonscientific audiences, and an emphasis on rigor and reproducibility in research, both of which dovetail well with the conference?s longstanding emphasis on the development of junior scientists.