Warm spring greetings on behalf of the Kennedy Krieger Institute/Johns Hopkins University Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC)!
One of the many strengths of our center is that it exists as part of a national network of 14 IDDRCs, and is also part of the larger network of Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) and University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research, and Service (UCEDD) programs—all supported by the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD).
Kennedy Krieger is both fortunate and unique in that it is one of the sites that houses IDDRC, LEND and UCEDD centers, all in one institution. As a research center, the strength of the IDDRC comes from its collaborations. In this issue, we would like to highlight one of the many exciting collaborative efforts that have come from the IDDRC network.
In 2017, the IDDRC network partnered with the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (JND) to sponsor and publish an annual IDDRC special issue, featuring cutting-edge research conducted at IDDRC sites around the U.S. Importantly, as an open-access journal, JND is freely available to anyone worldwide, and its articles may be read simply by visiting its website. The first IDDRC thematic series focused on developmental cognitive neuroscience and was published in December 2018. The special issue featured a wide range of topics on the functional and structural neuroanatomy and aberrant neural circuitry of different neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, prematurity and childhood epilepsy.
We would especially like to highlight the outstanding contribution to the 2018 special issue by Kennedy Krieger IDDRC-supported faculty members Keri Rosch, Mary Beth Nebel and Stewart Mostofsky. Their article, “ADHD-related Sex Differences in Fronto-subcortical Intrinsic Functional Connectivity and Associations with Delay Discounting,” highlights results from their study that, recognizing the importance of both cognition and motivation in understanding children with ADHD, showed that delay discounting—a phenomenon in which individuals discount the value of a reward the longer they have to wait for it—occurs (and is represented in the brain) differently among girls and boys with ADHD.
The full online IDDRC special issue can be freely accessed here.
We look forward to highlighting scientific discoveries that have been supported by the IDDRC through this forum, and discussing their relevance to the broader field of developmental disorders.
For more information about the Kennedy Krieger Institute/Johns Hopkins University IDDRC, please visit our website, or contact the center’s director, Mark Mahone, PhD, or co-director, Ali Fatemi, MD.