Past Events

Rosa Laufer-Sosa, PhD
Waisman Center
October 9, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brains and Bagels Seminar Series

Much is known about what visual cortical neurons respond to, but far less is known about what their activity causally contributes to perception. I will describe recent experiments using behavioral optogenetics in macaque area V4 to address this question. Monkeys reliably detect focal optogenetic perturbations of V4, and their ability to do so depends on the visual image being viewed at the time of stimulation. Unlike in inferotemporal cortex, however, weakening concurrent visual input does not impair detection and can enhance it, suggesting that V4 stimulation adds a visual event to ongoing perception. Intriguingly, nearby V4 sites produce distinct, feature-dependent perceptual effects. I will discuss how these findings motivate a new approach combining functional imaging with behavioral optogenetics to ask whether the known functional organization of visual cortex predicts the perceptual consequences of causally perturbing it.

Katie Christenson
October 7, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Research, Jobs, Volunteer work, and More

Katie Eulau, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
October 5, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Duet 2.0 is a remote, caregiver-mediated, early language intervention serving English- and Spanish-speaking families experiencing economic adversity in the Philadelphia area evaluated via randomized controlled trial. We hypothesized that (1) child language outcomes, (2) social contingency, (3) caregiver developmental knowledge, and (4) caregiver feelings of self-efficacy at three-month follow-up and six-month follow-up would benefit from Duet 2.0. Participants were caregivers and their children who entered the study at 12-30 months of age. The analytic sample included baseline data from 39 dyads; a total of 26 dyads completed at least one follow-up data collection. Duet 2.0 was positively associated with only the transcribed child expressive vocabulary measure (medium effect at 3mo), but not the standardized expressive vocabulary inventory. Social contingency (large effect at 3mo), caregiver developmental knowledge (large effect at 3mo, small at 6mo), and caregiver self-efficacy (in play contexts: small effect at 6mo; in teaching contexts: medium effect at 3mo, large at 6mo) were positively associated with the intervention. This exploratory sample with low-resourced families demonstrates the potential of this intervention to impact families’ lives and may suggest the value of lighter touch interventions, which can be scaled more easily to improve access for more families.

Sigan Hartley, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
October 2, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brain and Bagels Seminar Series

People with Down syndrome are genetically at-risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Establishing the average age-based timeline of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down syndrome could help clinicians, interventionists, and families to understand disease time course and inform the design of clinical trials of potential therapies. Data will be presented from recent analyses aimed at establishing the age-based average timeline of Alzheimer’s disease plasma (NfL, GFAP ptau217) and imaging (Hippocampal volume, PET-tau, PET-amyloid) biomarkers in relation to multiple domains of cognition in people with Down syndrome.

Misha Finney, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
September 29, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Funding & Recognition of Excellence

Andrea L. Ruppar, Ph.D.
62 Goodnight Hall
September 28, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Students with complex communication needs are among the most segregated learners in U.S. schools, often placed in separate settings on the premise that they are not ready for academic content. However, observational research shows that segregated classrooms offer few communication partners, little academic instruction with lots of down time, and low expectations, while general education classrooms provide the peer interaction, academic language, and literacy opportunities that give students reasons to communicate. Guided by the least dangerous assumption, I argue that the general curriculum should be the primary context for communication instruction and describe three key features of positive school experiences and outcomes for students with complex communication needs: collaborative service delivery, curriculum-based goals and vocabulary, and preparing everyone in a school to be a confident communication partner.

Bobby Gibbs, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
September 25, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
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Contributors to Efficient Use of Partial Speech Information in Electric Hearing

Katie Christenson
September 23, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Create a plan that works for your goals!

Claudia Schabes, M.S., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
September 21, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Young children with Down syndrome (DS) present with complex profiles of developmental strengths and weaknesses. For clinicians and researchers who work with young children with DS, this complexity presents a challenge: our assessment tools may capture only certain aspects of communication and behavior, while the broader DS profile can also shape how those measures are expressed and interpreted. In this seminar, I will present two studies examining two commonly used assessment tools, the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) device and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). The LENA, an audio recorder that automatically generates measures of adult and child communication, was worn by 38 preschoolers with DS across four days over the course of four weeks. This longitudinal design allowed us to examine the test-retest reliability of three common LENA metrics using intraclass correlation coefficients. The CARS is an observational assessment used to characterize autistic traits and is frequently used with individuals with DS. CARS item-level performance was examined using descriptive statistics and ordinal regression in a sample of 53 preschoolers with DS. Together, these studies highlight how the complex communication and behavioral profile of DS shapes both the measurement itself and the meaning we assign to it.

Jason Brandt, M.D., FACS
Waisman Center
September 18, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brains and Bagels Seminar Series

Cochlear implantation is one of the most successful neural prostheses in medicine, yet its impact on vestibular function remains an underappreciated clinical concern. This talk will provide an overview of vestibular physiology and its assessment, examine the evidence linking sensorineural hearing loss to balance dysfunction, and review the current literature on vestibular outcomes following cochlear implantation. As bilateral implantation becomes the standard of care, the cumulative risk of vestibular loss in the second ear raises important questions about the balance between auditory benefit and vestibular preservation. We will explore how ongoing research in bilateral hearing and spatial processing informs clinical decision-making for these patients.