Above: CNN’s Nick Glass interviews Andrea Stocco, an assistant professor at I-LABS and in the UW department of psychology. A UK-based reporting team from CNN International came to Seattle this fall to film the “brain-to-brain” experiment, a collaboration between I-LABS’ Andrea Stocco and Chantel Prat and UW Computer Science and Engineering’s Rajesh Rao. The nearly 5-minute segment reenacts the research team’s recently … Read More
Head Start: Tips for Parents from I-LABS Research
A list of brain-building tips parents can use to engage their infants is now available on the National Head Start Association’s website. The top two tips are based on I-LABS research: Tip #1, “Learn to Look!,” cites I-LABS findings of how a social behavior called “gaze following” in infants helps them learn language. Learn more about gaze following as a building block … Read More
Patricia Kuhl’s TED Talk Reaches 2 Million
Why is it about the baby brain that allows them to learn language? Why does the sing-song style of “parentese” speech help language acquisition? And how does growing up in a bilingual household change an infant brain? These are some of the findings Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS, discusses in her TED talk, “The Linguistic Genius of Babies.” The video of … Read More
Children’s Self-Esteem Already Established By Age 5
By age 5 children have a sense of self-esteem comparable in strength to that of adults, according to a new study by University of Washington researchers. Because self-esteem tends to remain relatively stable across one’s lifespan, the study suggests that this important personality trait is already in place before children begin kindergarten. “Our work provides the earliest glimpse to date … Read More
Patricia Kuhl’s Feature in ‘Scientific American’
How is it possible that in just a few short years a babbling baby becomes a talking toddler? In the November 2015 issue of “Scientific American,” I-LABS’ co-director Patricia Kuhl describes the brain mechanisms underlying the amazing yet fleeting gift that all infants have to quickly learn language. “I still marvel, after four decades of studying child development, how a child can … Read More
For Babies, Copy-Cat Games Provide a Social Compass
An article published in the Wall Street Journal describes recent I-LABS findings about baby brains and social behavior, which provide some of the first evidence of “body maps” in the infant brain. “Humans have a mapping ability that lets them see themselves in relation to others, thus helping them to navigate in the social world,” the article begins. It goes on to describe … Read More
Lost Brain Pathway Found
Photo caption: The VOF identified in a postmortem human brain in 1909 but labeled with a different name. A few years ago I-LABS’ Jason Yeatman, then a graduate student at Stanford University, found himself solving a mystery of an unidentified large fiber pathway in the human brain. “It was this massive bundle of fibers, visible in every brain I examined,” said … Read More
A Methodological Improvement to Brain-Computer Interfaces
Photo caption: Mark Wronkiewicz, a UW neuroscience graduate student, in his office at I-LABS. I-LABS researchers are discovering ways to make BCIs a practical treatment tool for brain injuries. Imagine sitting in your chair and raising the window blinds by simply thinking about it. Or speaking by visualizing the words but not actually saying them. It would happen by a … Read More
I-LABS Receives $2.5 Million Federal Funding for Early Childhood Education
The I-LABS Outreach and Education team will receive $2.5 million over 5 years to help develop evidence-based resources for early childhood educators and caregivers. The effort is part of the newly-formed National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning, which aims to improve outcomes for children and support professional development systems for childcare providers. “We’re delighted to have the … Read More
Math and Me: Children Who Identify with Math Get Higher Scores
How strongly children identify with math (their math “self-concept”) can be used to predict how high they will score on a standardized test of math achievement, according to a new I-LABS study. The study, published in the October 2015 issue of the journal Learning and Instruction, is the first to demonstrate a link between students’ subconscious math self-concepts and their … Read More