“The Promise of Discovery” is a podcast hosted by the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center that highlights research in intellectual and developmental disabilities. The goals of the podcast are to host conversations about research in plain language and to highlight “real world” implications. The discussions cover why the research matters in the lives of people with disabilities and families, how the research impacts and enhances what we know already and/or raises additional questions in the field, and what implications the research might have for policy.
Are Parents of School-Age Children Valid Reporters of Their Children's Grammatical Skills?
The Promise of Discovery Season 5, Episode 5
It’s important for speech language pathologists to learn about children’s grammar because grammar deficits are often a sign of a language impairment. For this experiment, researchers had parents and speech language pathologists fill out a checklist (Children’s Communication Checklist-2), to report on children communication skills, and then we compared the results. We learned that parents and speech language pathologists both identified speech deficits in children but that parents are not sensitive to differences in their children’s grammar.
Featuring: Jane (Janie) Sommer Eppstein, Ph.D. Student; Vanderbilt University
Interviewer: Melanie Schuele, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Member
23 Jan 2025
Visual perception with motor practice leads to lasting brain changes that support learning
The Promise of Discovery Season 5, Episode 4
This research explored how combining visual perception with motor practice—specifically drawing unfamiliar symbols—leads to lasting brain changes that support learning. Participants trained by drawing new letter-like symbols over four days while researchers tracked their brain activity using fMRI scans before, immediately after, and one-week post-training. The after-training scans revealed significant differences in activity within several brain regions—including the motor cortex—during the perception of trained compared to untrained symbols that were greater one-week post-training. This suggests that hands-on, visual-motor learning builds long-term changes in how the brain processes visual information, with potential implications for educational strategies and interventions.
Featuring: Shelby Buettner, Graduate Student, Vanderbilt University
Interviewer: Sophia Vinci-Booher, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology & Human Development and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Member
15 Jan 2025
Identifying new therapies for Neurofibromatosis Type 1
Colleen Niswender, Ph.D., and Ph.D. Candidate Harrison Parent discuss how their research identifies a potential new therapy for Neurofibromatosis Type 1 by augmenting mGlu7 function to alleviate cognitive impairments.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 20 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
28
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
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