Neuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain as they relate to specific psychological processes and behaviors. It is seen as a clinical and experimental field of psychology that aims to study, assess, understand and treat behaviors directly related to brain functioning.
Purpose of this study
To understand how childhood hemispherectomy impacts cognitive and social functioning in adulthood.
Who can participate
Individuals with hemispherectomy who are currently 18 or older and have IQ of 80 or above, and do not have VP or VA shunt.
What you will do
Participants will do a variety of tests and puzzles, and complete questionnaires about personal preferences and activities. This testing will be conducted in 3-4 hour sessions across several days, the exact amount of testing time varies from person to person; participants will also be asked to do a series of MRI studies taking 1-1.5 hours.
Logistics
Participants are invited to spend 3-4 days in Pasadena, California. We will pay for reasonable travel costs and housing accommodations. All testing is done at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology and California Institute of Technology.
The identity of all research participant is protected in publications and presentations in our studies. Participation is totally voluntary and you may stop any of the testing if you find it distressing. With your consent, you may be contacted in the future if you are eligible for new projects completed by our research team.
The data collected from you testing is intended solely for use in research analyses. We cannot provide any feedback about your performance; however, you may make arrangements for us to send your scores from standardized tests to a licensed professional qualified to provide you with an interpretation.
Research team
Dr. Lynn K. Paul has been a Visiting Associate at Caltech since 2004. Her primary research focus is the role of the corpus callosum in emotions and social cognition. Dr. Paul is heading the Caltech Corpus Callosum Research Program and an inter-institutional research consortium on agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC).
Dr. Warren S. Brown is Director of the the Human Brain and Cognition Laboratory at the Travis Research Institute at the Fuller Theological Seminary. Currently, he is most actively involved in neuroscience research related to the cognitive and psychosocial disabilities in a congenital brain malformation called agenesis of the corpus callosum. Brown has also studied callosal function in dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease, and has done research on brain wave changes associated with aging and dementia, language comprehension, dialysis treatment for kidney disease, and attention deficits in schizophrenia.
Dr. Ralph Adolphs is the Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Professor of Biology and Director of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center . He heads the Caltech Emotion and Social Cognition Laboratory, which investigates the neural underpinnings of human social behavior. They pursue such questions as: How do we recognize emotion from facial expressions? How do we make social judgments about other people? How do we look at people’s faces (how do we move our eyes when looking at them)? How do we make decisions that are influenced by emotion? How do we remember emotional events in our lives? How do we make moral judgments about what is right and wrong?
Participants’ travel, room, and board will be fully-funded by Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery Alliance.
Status: Open. Interested participants should contact our Executive Director, Monika Jones, at mjones@epilepsysurgeryalliance.org
Principal Investigators: Lynn K. Paul, Ph.D., Warren S. Brown, Ph.D., Ralph Adolphs, Ph.D.
Supervising Institutions: California Institute of Technology, Travis Research Institute at the Fuller Theological Seminary
