Flexibility of the Brain
Associate professor Kathleen Thomas studies how early experiences shape brain development and behavior in at-risk kids
Brains don’t develop and then stop one day. They change throughout life in response to our experiences. Kathleen Thomas, an associate professor in the Institute of Child Development, “fell in love” with studying the biology of the brain when she was a liberal arts student at Carleton College. And she’s been researching the brain ever since. “I planned on studying math and going into teaching, but that neuropsychology course changed everything,” she recalls.
At a Carleton professor’s urging, Thomas applied for a summer research program at the University’s Center for Cognitive Science. She was accepted and began working with professor Charles Nelson at the Institute of Child Development. Together they studied infants’ brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements to try to understand how very young children make sense of the world.
From the start, Thomas knew she wanted to stay involved in the type of research they were doing. She applied to the University so she could continue to work with Nelson. “I really enjoyed what we were learning about memory in infants and young children,” says Thomas, who earned her Ph.D. in child psychology and neuroscience in 1997. Nelson has since taken a position with Children’s Hospital in Boston, MA.
While her early research looked at brain development in healthy children, Thomas’s current work is focused primarily on cognition and brain development in at-risk kids. In particular, she is looking at how children’s early experiences affect behavior and learning in later life. One tool she is using more frequently is MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technology because the scans allow her and other scientists to observe the brain directly and track changes over time.
“We can see how big the regions of the brain are, so we can measure physical development in relation to function,” she says. “But we can also see things like what areas are most active when a child is doing a particular activity.” MRI scans may also be useful in helping researchers understand how atypical experiences, such as premature birth, traumatic events, and childhood stress, affect developing brains.
Recently, Thomas collaborated with professors from several different departments on a grant that enabled the University to purchase a new MRI scanner. The new scanner will make MRI technology more accessible to researchers who want to use it in their work. “MRIs can help us do things like see how the brain responds in social situations or determine what effect an intervention or curriculum had on brain activity and function,” she explains. “There’s always a possibility for change both positive and negative in the brain, which is what makes this research so interesting.”
Story by Meleah Maynard | September 2011
