The college has promoted the accomplishments of BJ Casey who is a former graduate student of John Richards – this is certainly something great to celebrate at the end of a busy semester!
https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/about/news/2022/bj_casey.php
Cognitive Neuroscience in the Age of Discovery
Speaker: BJ Casey, Ph.D., Yale University
Just as the brain changes over the life course to meet unique challenges and make new discoveries at each developmental phase, so too is the field of cognitive neuroscience changing. Over the years, we have seen significant advances in neuroimaging techniques and computational analytics as well as an enormous expansion of open-access data and tools that have broadened the reach of cognitive neuroscience to neighboring fields and broader society. This lecture will highlight how advances in cognitive neuroscience have informed our understanding of how the mind and brain develop, especially during adolescence, and examine how this knowledge informs the treatment of youth in medicine and in the U.S. legal system.
The International Congress on Infant Studies meets every two years. This year the in-person conference was cancelled because of the COVID-19. There will be a virtual conference instead. We will have three posters at the conference:
Face specialization and emerging symptoms of ASD in etiologically-distinct high-risk infants. Maggie W. Guy, John E. Richards, Abigail Hogan, and Jane E. Roberts
The Face Inversion Effect: Cortical Responses During the First Year of Life. Stefania Conte and John E. Richards
The Role of Low-level Visual Cues on the Neural Responses to Faces in Infants. Stefania Conte and John E. Richards
The company, ELECTRICAL GEODESICS (EGI), plays an important role in our research and data collection. EGI designs the brain-recording equipment and software used in our lab, and labs all over the world, involved in the recording and monitoring of brain activity. Early in 2020, our research team found out EGI would no longer be financially supported by their investor, PHILIPS. NO MORE EGI??? The company who supplied our lab for decades would be no more??? As one would expect, we panicked. But recently, we were happy to learn another company involved in Neuroscience, MAGSTIM, will acquire EGI at the beginning of 2021. What a relief! MAGSTIM saves the day!
Magstim announced it will purchase the EGI product line from Philips Neuro. This will insure the continuation of the EGI products. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200702005099/en/Magstim-Acquires-Electrical-Geodesics-EGI-Product-Portfolio
PANDEMIC POSTPONES RESEARCH
Needless to say, COVID-19 has suspended all research studies at the USC Infant Lab, but we are diligently making plans to begin testing soon! With most of our studies requiring close contact between the participant and researcher, we will be taking extensive measures to assure the safety of everyone involved. We are looking forward to seeing all of our new parents and newborns, soon! Without a doubt, it’s times like these when science is needed.
JER is visiting the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience lab at Harvard–Chuck Nelson. He is collaborating with Katherine Perdue and Wanze Xie on source reconstruction of fNIRS data. He also is giving a talk about our work on the brain areas supporting face perception. Title is “About Face!! Brain areas supporting face processing in adults, infants, and children”.
JER is giving a talk about our work on the brain areas supporting face perception. Title is “About Face!! Brain areas supporting face processing in adults, infants, and children. See Richards Flyer 9.11.18
Hey everyone!! It has been a while since we have put news on our site. We just updated our Infant Lab and JERLab sites. We have been working hard on getting acquired data into publications. This has resulted in five or so publications last year, two new grants starting last year, sent one postdoc to a job and a grad student to a postdoc, and hired a new postdoc. We will update the news for the site, focusing on some recent accomplishments.
