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ON-GOING RESEARCH PROJECTS

 Speech in Parkinson’s disease Project

Our research team is interested in using speech signals recorded either via a professional grade recording device or a telephone line to differentiate older adults with Parkinson’s disease from those without Parkinson’s disease. We are using machine learning methods to analyze and classify these data.  These studies are ongoing.

Publications:

Iyer, A.+, Kemp, A.S.+*, Rhamatallah, Y., Pillai, L., Glover, A., Prior, F.W., Larson-Prior, L.J., Virmani, T. A  (2023) machine learning method to process voice samples for identification of Parkinson’s Disease. Sci Rep, 13:20615 (+co-first authors). PMID: 37996478

  Research in underserved and rural areas

Our collaborative team is interested in expanding our research to be more diverse and inconclusive by engaging participants beyond those close to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in more rural communities.  Studies have included a focus on the burdens faced by family caregivers for both children and adults with debilitating medical conditions to telemedicine outreach.  These studies are ongoing and have been strongly supported by the UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI: https://tri.uams.edu/).

Publications:

Virmani, T., Lotia, M., Glover, A., Pillai, L., Kemp, A.*, Iyer, A., Farmer, P., Syed, S., Larson-Prior, L., Prior, F. (2022) Feasibility of telemedicine research visits in people with Parkinson’s residing in medically underserved areas. J. Clinical Trans Sci. 1-36. PMID: 36590358

Shoults, C.C., Rutherford, M.W., Kemp, A.S., Addicott, M., Brown, A., Greene, C.J., Hayes, C.J., Gan, J., Larson-Prior, L.J., Bona, J.P. (2023) Determining caregiver burden using social media forums. Int. J. Environmental Res. and Public Health. 20(3):1933 PMID: 36767297

Virmani, T., Pillai, L., Smith, V., Glover, A., Abrams, D., Farmer, P., Syed, S., Spencer, H.J., Kemp, A., Barron, K., Murray, T., Morris, B., Bowers, B., Ward, A., Imus, T., Larson-Prior, L.J., Lotia, M., Prior, F. (2024) Feasibility of regional center telehealth visits utilizing a rural research network in people with Parkinson’s disease. J. Clinical Trans Sci. 8(1):e63. PMID: 38655451

  The impact of nutrition on cognitive   development

My research team at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center is interested in the impact of diet and nutrition on infant and child cognitive development.  We have collaborated on several large, longitudinal studies to provide data on brain and cognitive development using electrrophysiological methods (high density EEG) in infants over the first 6 years of life and have led cross-sectional studies in older children.  While these studies are no longer open to enrollment, we continue to analyze and publish results from these data rich studies.

Publications:

Na, X. Li, T., Larson-Prior, L.J., Baldwin, C.E., Badger, T.M., Ou, X. (2021) Correlations between sleep disturbance and brain cortical morphometry in healthy children. Sleep Science & Practice, 5:16.

Alatorre-Cruz, G.C., Downs, H., Hagood, D., Sorenson, S.T., Williams, K.,  Larson-Prior, L.J. (2022) Effect of obesity on arithmetic processing in preteens with high and low math skills. An event-related potentials study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience: Cognitive Neuroscience (16). PMID: 35360282 Shared to OpenNEURO. https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds004019/versions/1.0.0

Alatorre-Cruz, G.C., Andres, A., Gu, Y., Downs, H., Hagood, D., Sorenson, S.T., Williams, K., Larson-Prior, L.J. (2023) Impact of feeding habits on the development of language-specific processing of phonemes in the infant brain.  An event-related potentials study. Front. Nutr.- Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health. doi:10.3389/fnut/2-23/1032413. PMID: 36875846

Gilbreath, D., Hagood, D., Alatrorre-Cruz, G., Andres, A., Downs, H., Larson-Prior, L.J. (2023) Effects of early nutrition factors on baseline neurodevelopment during the first 6 months of life: an EEG study.  Nutrients, 15:1535. PMID: 36986265

Gilbreath, D.*, Hagood, D., Larson-Prior, L. (2024) A systematic review over the effect of early infant diet on neurodevelopment: insights from neuroimaging. Nutrients. 16(11):1703. PMID: 38892636

The Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Project

The Arkansas Children’s Research Institute and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences under the leadership of Drs. Xiawei Ou, Ashley Acheson and Lorraine McKelvey are members of the large HBCD Project consortium.  My laboratory at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center is part of the ACRI/UAMS team and provides high density EEG for the children and families enrolled in this important new NIH initiative (https://hbcdstudy.org/ and https://www.archildrens.org/research/clinical-trials/hbcd-study).  The study is currently open to enrollment and mothers interested in enrolling can contact Ms. Micaela Parkinson at hbcd@archildrens.org.

Publications to date:

Fox, N.A., Perez-Edgar, K., Morales, S., Brito, N.H., Campbell, A.M., Cavanaugh, J.F.,, Larson-Prior, L.J.,, et al. (2024) The development and structure of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study EEG protocol. Devel Cogn Neurosci, 69:101447

RECENTLY COMPLETED PROJECTS

Parkinson’s Disease Phenotype Project

Data collection for this project has ended and was performed at NYU Langone Medical Center under the direction of James E. Galvin, MD, MPH with analysis of functional imaging data begun under Linda Larson-Prior, PhD at Washington University in St. Louis.  Both investigators have since changed institutions, but data analysis is on-going.  The purpose of this study was to better understand the progression of cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients and to utilize neuroimaging, clinical and neuropsychological data to develop a phenotype for cognitive dysfunction in this population.  Eight-two subjects (ages 60-94) participated in this study and underwent clinical assessment of both motor and cognitive function.  Neuroimaging included fMRI, high density EEG (256 sensors) and DTI.  Data analysis of both fMRI and EEG data has been completed and two manuscripts are in preparation, the first analyzing resting-state fMRI data and the second analyzing high density EEG data.

COMPLETED RESEARCH PROJECTS

NSF EPSCoR Project

This is a multi-site, multi-disciplinary research project to better understand brain dynamics and higher-order brain function (memory) in both human and animal subjects with generalized seizure disorder.  The project will leverage a multi-disciplinary team of neuroscientists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, engineers to gain an understanding of the brain “in crisis” at the cellular, molecular and macroscale.  In addition to the scientific goals of the project, the study team will focus on educating the next generation of scientists with a particular emphasis on providing research opportunities to undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students who from institutions without strong research programs in the biomedical sciences.  This research is well aligned with the NSF “Understanding the Brain Initiative” announced in April 2013.  Current work has focused on development of a spindle detection algorithm in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Holly (Mathworks, Inc.) and Dr. Theresa Murray (Louisiana Tech University) to be deployed in rodents that were examined over time prior to and following induction of epileptic activity.

Publications:

DeGeorge, E., Fullen, C., Gess, J., Kleiner, J., Larson-Prior, L.J. (2021) Age of onset and medication effects on cognitive performance and quality of life in patients with epilepsy.  Epilepsy & Beh, 121:108008 PMID: 34004525

Merten, J.E.*, Villarrubia, S.A., Holly, K.S., Kemp, A.S.*, Kumler, A.C., Larson-Prior, L.J., Murray, T.A. (2022) The use of rodent models to better characterize the relationship among epilepsy, sleep and memory. Epilepsia, 63(3):526-536. PMID: 34985784

Pediatric Head Modeling Project

A number of potentially debilitating neurocognitive disorders are a consequence of delays or abnormalities in brain development, and childhood epilepsy has been shown to be associated with increased risk of learning disabilities, ADHD and depression.  These associations make it imperitive that  we gain a better understanding of the relationship between cognitive and anatomical development.  Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive methods for assessment of dynamic brain activity both at rest and during cognitive activities.  However, at present, the head models used to identify sources of activity were developed for adults and introduce errors in localization in pediatric populations.  Thus, the goal of this project is to develop, test and validate age-specific pediatric head models that are accurate both in morphological features and in regional differences in tissue conductivity.  This project resulted in public release of a set of innovative age-specific head models together with newly developed software from our project website.

 

Publications:

Song, J., Morgan, K., Turovets, S., Li, K., Davey, C., Godyadinov, P., Luu, P., Smith, K., Prior, F., Larson-Prior, L., Tucker, D.M. (2013) Anatomically accurate head models and their derivatives for dense array EEG source localization. Functional Neurology, Rehabilitation and Ergonomics, 3(2-3): 275-293.

Visit Pedeheadmod.net

REM SLEEP BEHAVIOR DISORDER Project

REM Sleep Behavior disorder (RBD) is a sleep parasomnia prodromal for onset of Parkinson’s disease.  Dr. Yo-El Ju, MD (Assistant Professor, Neurology, Washington University) is a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist awarded this fellowship project grant during her residency training.  The project was designed to use neuroimaging (fMRI) to evaluate changes in functional brain connectivity in healthy adults with clinically defined RBD.  The study showed changes in visuospatial processing regions consistent with changes reported in Parkinson’s Disease.

Publications:

Ju, Y-E., Larson-Prior, L.J. and Duntley, S.D. (2011) Changing demographics in REM sleep behavior disorder: possible effect of autoimmunity and antidepressants. Sleep Med, 12:278-283. PMID:21317035

Larson-Prior, L.J., Ju, Y-E.S., Galvin, J.E. (2015) Cortical-subcortical interactions in hypersomnia disorders: mechanisms underlying cognitive and behavioral aspects of the sleep-wake cycle.  Front Neurol, 5:165.  PMID 25309500

Human Connectome Project

Visit Human Connectome Site

Publications:

Van Essen, D.C., Ugurbil, K., Auerback, D., Barch, D., Behrens, T.E., Bucholz, R., Chang A., Chen, L., Corbetta, M., Curtiss SW, Della Penna S., Feingberg, D., Glasser, MF,  Harel N., Heath, A.C.,  Larson-Prior, L.J., Marcus, D., Michalareas, G., Moerller, S., Oostenveld R.,  Petersen, S.E., Prior, F., Schlaggar, B., Smith, S., Snyder, AZ, Xu, J.G., and Yacoub, E. for the WU-Minn HCP Consortium. (2012) The human connectome project: a data acquisition perspective. Neuroimage. 62:2222-2231 PMID 22366334

Larson-Prior, L.J., Oostenveld, R., Della Penna, S., Michalareas, G., Prior, F., Babajani-Feremi, A., Schofffelen, J.M., Marzetti, L., de Pasquale, F., Di Pompeo, F., Stout, J., Woolrich, M., Luo, Q., Bucholz, R., Fries, P., Pizzella, V., Romani, G.L., Corbetta, M., Snyder, A.Z. (2013) Adding dynamics to the Human Connectome Project with MEG. Neuroimage. 80:190-201. PMID 23702419

Hodge, M., Horton, W., Brown, T., Herrick, R., Olsen, T., Hileman, M.E., McKay, M., Archie, K.A., Cler, E., Harms, M.P., Burgess, G.C., Glasser, M.F., Elam, J.S, Curtiss, S.W., Barch, D.M., Oostenveld, R.,Larson-Prior, L.J., Ugerbil, K., Van Essen, D.E., Marcus, D.S. (2015)  ConnectomeDB – Sharing human brain connectivity data.  Neuroimage, 124(PtB):1102-1107.  PMID 25934470

Functional Imaging of Human Sleep

Visit Human Connectome Site

Link to publications:

Larson-Prior, L.J., Zempel, J., Nolan, T.S., Prior, F.W., Snyder, A.Z. and Raichle, ME (2009) Cortical network functional connectivity is maintained in the descent to sleep. PNAS, 106:4489-4494. PMID: PMC2657465

Larson-Prior, L.J., Power, J.D., Vincent, J.L., Nolan, T.S., Coalson, R.S., Zempel, J., Snyder, A.Z., Schlaggar, B.L., Raichle, M.E., Petersen, S.E.  (2011) Modulation of the brain’s functional network architecture in the transition from wake to sleep. Prog Br Res, 193:277-294.  PMID 21854969.

Shannon, B., Dosenbach, R., Su, Y., Vlassenko, A., Larson-Prior, L.J., Nolan, T., Snyder, A., Raichle, M.E.  Morning-evening variation in human brain metabolism and memory circuits (2012). J. Neurophysiol., PMID 23197455

Zempel, J.M., Politte, D., Kelsey, M., Verner, R., Nolan, T.S., Babajani-Feremi, A., Prior, F. Larson-Prior, L.J .(2012)  Characterization of scale-free properties of human electrocorticography in awake and slow-wave sleep states.  Front Neurol, 3:76 PMID 22701446