Carolina Institute News

UNC Neuroscientists and CIDD Investigators awarded $2 million to study roots of cognitive disabilities.Click here to learn more.

Autism Speaks publishes an article featuring CIDD research and faculty. Click here to read "Hunting for Autism's Earliest Clues."

A new study led by CIDD researchers found significant differences in brain development starting at age 6 months in high-risk infants who later develop autism, compared to high-risk infants who did not develop autism. The study was published online on Friday, Feb. 17 at AJP in Advance, a section of the website of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Its results are the latest from the ongoing Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health and headquartered at UNC. Learn More.

A collaboration between the University of North Carolina Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) Program and Duke University Physical Therapy Pediatric Residency Program has developed an opportunity for a Physical Therapy Fellow. Click Here to learn more.

A CIDD research study by Zylka, Philpot, and Roth recently puhlished in the journal Nature was listed as #5 in the NIMH Top Research Advances of 2011. Learn More.

Researchers in Ben Philpot's lab have identified a class of compounds that, when administered to mouse models of Angelman syndrome, activate production of a brain protein whose absence causes this relatively rare condition. The study has been published in the online journal Nature. Visit the article,"Topoisomerase inhibitors unsilence the dormant allele of Ube3a in neurons," and the new CIDD Angelman Syndrome Clinic website.

CIDD's Associate Director, Jim Bodfish, was quoted in a Simons Foundation Autism Research Inititative (SFARI) article entitled "New focus on repetition, obsession in autism studies." Click here to read more.

CIDD faculty member Dr. Lauren Turner-Brown, along with colleagues Drs. Kara Hume, Sam Odom and Brian Boyd, has been awarded three years funding to study the efficacy of the Home TEACCHing Program by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Research Program. Dr. Turner-Brown and colleagues will study this early intervention program that targets families with newly diagnosed toddlers with autism spectrum disorders, aiming to teach parents strategies for working and playing with their child, and, ultimately, to improve child functioning during a very critical period of early development for children with autism. A primary goal of the funding agency is to improve health outcomes for children and families in underserved areas, thus Drs. Turner-Brown and colleagues plan to focus their research in rural NC communities.

Congratulations Dr. Turner-Brown and colleagues!

UNC neuroscientist Eva S. Anton, PhD, professor of cell and molecular physiology and CIDD investigator, has been awarded $1.18 million over 4-years from an NIH program called EUREKA (Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration). Anton was awarded the grant for his research in the mapping of neuronal placement in the developing cerebral cortex. This project is aimed at defining the neuronal blueprint that forms the brain connectome, a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain.  Learn More

With support from NIH and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, CIDD researcher Gabriel Ditcher, Ph.D., has embarked on a project to gain insight into the atypical but unconscious emotional responses that occur in people with autism. This collaboration with Vanderbilt University researcher, Stephen Benning, Ph.D., plans to apply this knowledge to improve treatment for people with this potentially debilitating disorder. Learn More.

Videos of the CIDD’s Investigator Forums are available on our website. Click here to view the latest presentation by Dr. Josephine Johns on Integration Cocaine's Effects on Maternal-Infant Behavior: Models of Intergenerational and Translational Mechanisms. Scroll down to find this Forum held on May 10, 2011.

CIDD LEND students continue to make us proud!

• Click here to view and article by Brittany Richardson about her experience attending the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Annual Conference published on the AUCD website.
• Click here to view posters presented by LEND students at the conference.