April Benasich

Uncovering how infant brains develop could provide for early intervention
About 5 to 10 percent of all children beginning school are estimated to have language-learning impairments, leading to reading, speaking and comprehension problems, along with a host of other challenges. Research being conducted by neuroscientist April Benasich, however, is aimed at eliminating or mitigating those problems by uncovering how to correct learning problems before babies even begin to speak.
Utilizing a range of techniques, Benasich's goal is to determine how the infant brain develops and processes sounds so techniques can be created to correct language and learning problems when the brain is most able to change.
Director of the Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University in Newark, she and her lab were among the first to discover that how effectively a baby processes differences between rapidly occurring sounds - such as "ba" and "da" - is a firm predictor of future language and cognitive problems. As published online by Behavioral Brain Research (September 11, 2008), her research also has shown that gamma wave activity in the brains of infants provide a window into their cognitive development and could open the way for early and more effective intervention.
"Having strong bursts of gamma appears to assist the brain in making the neural connections needed for effective language development," says Benasich. "By measuring gamma activity in the frontal cortex, which is the last brain area to mature and which is used to make decisions and solve problems, we may be able to tell how well the brain is developing in general."
Being able to determine a child's level of development could allow for more effective treatment at a critical point in time when the brain is laying the foundations for cognition and language, and establishing the neural connections for future learning. From 16 to 36 months, there is a dramatic explosion of linguistic and cognitive growth. It is during that period that children rush headlong into language, increasing from a vocabulary of 100 words to 1,000 words, learning that words stand for objects, and that words not only are associated with a specific object but categories.
"During this intense learning period, they are little scientists putting things together and figuring things out," says Benasich. "Lower levels of gamma power in the resting brain may provide a 'red flag' indicating that a child will experience language or attentional problems. Knowing that may allow us to provide effective intervention during this critical learning period."
Her research also has shown that children who have difficulty processing rapid auditory input are not just showing a simple maturational lag, but are actually processing incoming acoustic information differently. They appear to be using different brain areas and perhaps different analytical strategies.
"Our hope is that we will be able to gently guide the brains of infants who are at the highest risk for language learning impairments to be more efficient processors so they can avoid the difficulties that result from struggling with language," says Benasich.
Biography
April Benasich received her Ph.D.s from New York University in Experimental and Clinical Psychology in 1987. She also holds a B.S.N. in nursing and has extensive clinical experience with high-risk infants and infant and toddler developmental/neuropsychological testing. .. While at NYU, her research focused on early infant behaviors (i.e. attention, habituation, and memory) and their relation to later cognitive and linguistic competence. In collaboration with Marc H. Bornstein (now chief of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development section on Child and Family Research, National Institutes of Health), she examined the reliability and stability of habituation of visual attention in infancy and its potential as a predictor of childhood cognitive development. Her current research focuses on the study of early neural processes necessary for normal cognitive and language development as well as the impact of disordered processing on infant neurocognitive status in high risk or neurologically impaired infants. Along with being a tenured professor of neuroscience and the director of the Infancy Studies Laboratory at the Center for Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, she is director of the Carter Center for Neurocognitive Research, one of the Carter Centers for Brain Research in Holoprosencephaly and Related Malformations.
Important Publications
- Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations, Journal of Visualized Experiments, July 1, 2015
- Plasticity in developing brain: active auditory exposure impacts prelinguistic acoustic mapping, Journal of Neuroscience, Oct. 1, 2014
- An electrophysiological investigation of discourse coherence in healthy adults, Clinical Linguistics & Phonology, Apr. 29, 2014
- Tracking the attentional blink profile: a cross-sectional study from childhood to adolescence, Psychological Research, Dec. 15, 2013
- Enhancement of Gamma oscillations signals preferential processing of native over foreign phonemic contrasts in infants, Journal of Neuroscience, Nov. 27, 2013
- Oscillatory support for rapid frequency change processing in infants, Neuropsychologia, Sep. 17, 2013
- Distraction by emotion in early adolescence: affective facilitation and interference during the attentional blink, Frontiers in Psychology, Sept. 3, 2013
- Regional infant brain development: an MRI-based morphometric analysis in 3 to 13 month olds, Cerebral Cortex, July 6, 2013
- Neonatal electrophysiological predictors of cognitive and language development, Developmental Medicine & Child Neurolology, June 27, 2013
- Time course of ERP generators to syllables in infants: A source localization study using age-appropriate brain templates, NeuroImage, Feb. 15, 2012
- Reduced sensory oscillatory activity during rapid auditory processing as a correlate of language-learning impairment, Journal of Neurolinguistics, Sept. 2011
- Source localization of event related potentials to pitch change mapped onto age-appropriate MRIs at 6 months of age, NeuroImage, Feb. 1, 2011
- Resting frontal gamma power at 16, 24 and 36 months predicts individual differences in language and cognition at 4 and 5 years, Behavioral Brain Research, July 7, 2011
- Association between the size of the amygdala in infancy and language abilities during the preschool years in normally developing children, NeuroImage, Feb. 1, 2010
- Using early standardized language measures to predict later language and early reading outcomes in children at high risk for language-learning impairments, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Jan.-Feb., 2009
- Early cognitive and language skills are linked to resting frontal gamma power across the first 3 years, Behavioral Brain Research, Dec. 22, 2008
- Understanding language and cognitive deficits in very low birth weight children, Developmental Psychobiology, March 2008
- Development of structure and function in the infant rain: Implications for cognition, language and social behavior, Neuroscience and Biobehavorial Reviews, Aug. 4, 2006
- Brain responses to tonal changes in the first two years of life, Brain and Development, Dec. 20, 2005
- The Carter Neurocognitive Assessment: Evaluation of children with severe expressive language and motor impairment, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Oct. 1, 2004
- A Family Aggregation Study: The influence of family history and other risk factors on language development, Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, April 1, 2003
- Infant discrimination of rapid auditory cues predicts later language impairment, Behavioral Brain Research, Oct. 17, 2002
- Look who's talking: A prospective study of familial transmission of language impairments, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, Oct. 1, 1997
- Language, learning, and behavioral disturbances in childhood: A longitudinal perspective, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, May 1, 1993 (abstract)
Videos
- Baby Talk & Brain Waves, ScienCentral News, Sept. 26, 2008
Media Coverage
- Baby Prep School: A Brain Game Or A Mama’s Coo-Cooing? Scientific American, Oct. 24, 2014
- How Whooshes and Beeps Can Make Babies Better Listeners, The Atlantic, Oct. 9, 2014
- Listen up, baby! Rutgers research boosts listening skills of infants, NJ.com/Star-Ledger, Oct. 8, 2014
- Acoustic training could accelerate language skills early on in babies, The Star, Oct. 7, 2014
- A 'Sound' Approach to Help Babies Talk, ABC News/Good Morning America, Oct. 3, 2014
- Rutgers Study Says Training Might Enable Babies To Learn To Speak Earlier In Life, CBS Philadelphia, Oct. 2, 2014
- How to Improve a Baby’s Language Skills Before They Start to Talk, Time, Sep. 30, 2014
- Rutgers Studies How Babies’ Brains Develop Language, NJTV-New Jersey public television, Sep. 30, 2015
- Parents May Soon Have Neuroscience-Approved, Language-Promoting Gadgets for Their Babies, New York Magazine, Sep. 30, 2014
- Improving babies' language skills before they're even old enough to speak, Science Daily, Sep. 30, 2014
- Improving Babies’ Language Skills Before They’re Even Old Enough to Speak, Rutgers Today, Sep. 30, 2014
- How the Brain Learns. US News, February 24, 2012
- How to Build a Better Learner Scientific American, July 2011
- Groundbreaking Neuroscience Research: Little Brains, Big Ideas Feature profile on Rutgers University website
- Rutgers University, Newark neuroscientists featured on PBS program "The New Science of Learning: Brain Fitness for kids" Rutgers news release, Jun. 2, 2009
- Effect of gamma waves on cognitive and language skills in children, Oct. 20, 2008
- The art of simplexity, Time, Jun. 12, 2008
- Impairments in language development can be detected in infants as young as three months, Rutgers news release, Apr. 9, 2008
- NSF awards $3.5 million to Collaborative Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center; Tallal to head Rutgers team, Rutgers news release, Rutgers news release, Oct. 9, 2006