KU News Release

KU mental retardation center awarded $6.35 million renewal grant

LAWRENCE — The Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Center at the University of Kansas received a five-year $6.35 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to continue its internationally recognized research into the causes and treatment of mental retardation and other developmental disabilities.

Known as a core grant, the money allows the center to provide administrative, scientific and technical infrastructure to support the work of 65 research scientists at the KU Medical Center, KU’s Lawrence campus and the Parsons and Kansas City, Kan., research sites.

“The Kansas MRDDRC is unique among developmental disabilities research centers in part because of our commitment to biobehavioral research, “ said Steve Warren, director of the center.

Biobehavioral research explores how the behavior of an individual can be tied to processes within the individual as well as to its present environment and history.

Some recent examples include the Actifier, a motorized pacifier connected to a computer that trains at-risk preterm infants how to suck and measures and analyzes brain functioning and possibly prevents brain damage; the Actometer, a highly sensitive instrument for measuring the motor effects of drug and gene therapy in laboratory mice and rats; and the first test for speech pathologists to diagnose an often misdiagnosed language impairment.

The grants are highly competitive and must be renewed on the basis of a national competition and rigorous review by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development every five years. The Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Center, which has been funded continuously for 40 years, is one of only 14 national mental retardation research centers designated and funded by the federal agency.

Center scientists also train graduate and post-graduate students in a variety of settings including underserved urban and rural Kansas communities.

The Kansas Center for Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities is the largest and oldest affiliated center of the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at KU.

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The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.