It’s important for speech language pathologists to learn about children’s grammar because grammar deficits are often a sign of a language impairment. For this experiment, researchers had parents and speech language pathologists fill out a checklist (Children’s Communication Checklist-2), to report on children communication skills, and then we compared the results. We learned that parents and speech language pathologists both identified speech deficits in children but that parents are not sensitive to differences in their children’s grammar.

Featuring: Jane (Janie) Sommer Eppstein, Ph.D. Student; Vanderbilt University

Interviewer: Melanie Schuele, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Member

This research explored how combining visual perception with motor practice—specifically drawing unfamiliar symbols—leads to lasting brain changes that support learning. Participants trained by drawing new letter-like symbols over four days while researchers tracked their brain activity using fMRI scans before, immediately after, and one-week post-training. The after-training scans revealed significant differences in activity within several brain regions—including the motor cortex—during the perception of trained compared to untrained symbols that were greater one-week post-training. This suggests that hands-on, visual-motor learning builds long-term changes in how the brain processes visual information, with potential implications for educational strategies and interventions.

Featuring: Shelby Buettner, Graduate Student, Vanderbilt University

Interviewer: Sophia Vinci-Booher, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology & Human Development and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Member

Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) is a neurodevelopmental disease which affects about 100,000 people in the US. Around 80% of these patients experience cognitive and intellectual impairments which are unaffected by currently approved therapies for NF1. A recent genetic study from our lab identified an association between the NF1 disease and a receptor protein called metabotropic glutamate receptor 7 (mGlu7). This project investigates how using small molecules to augment mGlu7 function could help identify new therapies for NF1 patients struggling with cognitive impairments.

Featuring: Harrison Parent, Ph.D. Candidate- Niswender Lab, Department of Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Interviewer: Colleen Niswender, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pharmacology; Director of Molecular Pharmacology, Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Member