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LAWRENCE -- The Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communications Disorders Center became the University of Kansas Schiefelbusch Life Span Institute's 13th affiliated research center with the award of a five-year, $3.6 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, or NIDCD.
Known as a core grant, the new funding allows KU to provide administrative, scientific and technical infrastructure to support current and future research projects on communication disorders at the Lawrence campus and KU Medical Center.
The grants are highly competitive. They can be renewed every five years based on a rigorous review by the NIDCD. The KU research center will be one of only 15 nationally the federal agency has designated and funded.
Mabel Rice, distinguished professor of speech-language-hearing at KU and an internationally renowned scholar in the area of child language acquisition and disorders, will direct the new center. She also directs two other LSI centers, the Child Language Doctoral Program and the Merrill Advanced Studies Center.
"This grant is a testament to the leadership of Dr. Rice and an official designation of KU as one of the strongest programs in the country on communication development and disorders throughout the lifespan," said Steven Warren, Life Span Institute director.
The center initially will assist 12 researchers and 15 projects through administrative services, human subject recruitment, and digital and electrical engineering.
Their research addresses a wide range of issues relevant to the causes and treatment of communications disorders. For example:
• John Colombo, professor of psychology, is examining how an infant's ability to recognize and remember can predict later learning and speaking problems.
• Susan Kemper, distinguished professor of psychology, is showing how speech in older age reflects declines in working memory.
• Mark Chertoff, associate professor of hearing and speech at KU Medical Center, is concerned with developing more precise measures of hearing loss to aid designers of cochlear implants and hearing aids.
"The award attests to the high regard for the scientific accomplishments of individual investigators affiliated with the center, and the fact that KU's team of investigators is among the top teams in the nation," said Rice.
KU communication disorders research already has led to real-world applications, such as the first diagnostic test for Specific Language Impairment, developed by Rice and Professor Kenneth Wexler of MIT, and a high-tech pacifier that helps premature infants learn to nurse and that may help detect and prevent developmental disabilities. Steven Barlow, chair of the speech-language-hearing department and director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory, developed the pacifier, known as the "Actifier."
The Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communications Disorders Center is one of the 13 centers and more than 140 projects of the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies.
The other centers are: the Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities, the Life Span Institute at Parsons, the Juniper Gardens Children's Project, the Beach Center on Disability, the Research and Training Center on Independent Living, the Gerontology Center, the Child Language Doctoral Program, the Merrill Advanced Studies Center, the Work Group on Health Promotion and Community Development, the Institute for Child Development, and the Center for Physical Activity and Weight Management.
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