Dr. Helen Neville@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Helen+Neville@@ and her research team at the University’s Brain Development Lab are working to change the course of children on a low socioeconomic path.
Neville and her team have conducted experiments that show children at low socioeconomic standing have a harder time staying alert than children with higher socioeconomic standing. According to researchers, many low socioeconomic children endure large amounts of stress, which could lead to attention problems that affect many areas of a child’s growth, such as linguistics and emotional development.
In recent years, the team at the Brain Development Lab have been putting families gathered from the Head Start preschool program — which provides child development services to low-income children — into an eight-week program to reverse the cycle of poverty.
Research assistant Aarika Pierce studies electrode data on children’s brains. The little spikes, she explains, indicate blinking by the children. (Nate Barrett/Oregon Daily Emerald).
By strapping an electrode-fitted cap to the child, researchers are first able to measure how much attention is being devoted to a task at hand.
“Essentially, we are eavesdropping on a child’s brainwaves,” Postdoctoral Research Associate Eric Pakulak@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Eric+Pakulak@@ said.
The team monitors the brain waves of a child’s brain while the child watches a video screen with a speaker placed to the right of the child. The child is told to listen to the audio from the right speaker, while entirely different audio plays from a speaker on the left.
“There are two reasons why this is so powerful: The first is that it’s exquisite temporal measurement, which allows very good information with rapid timing. The second is that it’s engaging to children,” Pakulak said.
Following this initial measurement, researchers begin a program that works separately with both parents and their children to learn how to reduce stress levels and improve attention in the children. Families meet with the team once a week for two hours; parents learn new skills while children participate in an array of entertaining games and activities. One game, for example, is called emotional bingo and aims to help children cope with different feelings.
After the program, low socioeconomic children have shown brain function that is similar to high socioeconomic children.
The program, now in its eighth year, works off of a concept called brain plasticity, which means that during developing years, a child’s brain can be reshaped in the direction of enhancement or increased vulnerability. This coincides with all of Neville’s research, which works with the study of biological constraints and the role of the environment in developing human brains.
Currently, in addition to working with more families and children, the team is working on translating the study into Spanish and adjusting it to fit Latino culture.
“It makes it more powerful because it allows us to reach another population. We are fundamentally the same. Same DNA, same brain,” Postdoctoral Research Associate Zayra Longoria@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Zayra+Longoria@@ said.
Research Associate Ted Bell@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=bell@@ stressed the need for this type of research in education policy.
“Education needs more evidence-based science. The two fields need to meet,” Bell said. “We hope what we do here and in other labs has a lasting impact on early childhood education.”
