Sean Deoni: Decentralizing Pediatric Research: Bringing Science to our Families with Wearables, Nearables, and Mobile Labs

ECHO Discovery Summary

Sean Deoni, PhD of Brown University, shared his research on MRI techniques and the use of wearable devices to study brain maturation in infants and children.

Dr. Deoni discussed how his study’s use of mobile devices helped measure the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on neurocognitive outcomes. When they found a steep decline in both verbal and non-verbal cognitive development among young children in 2020 and 2021, they used wearables to investigate why.

Using a device placed on a child’s chest, they were able to remotely measure language activity in homes of children from birth to age 2. They found that the number of adult words the children heard, vocalizations they made, and back-and-forth conversational interactions per hour declined steeply, while TV usage went up. Using wearables, they also found that infant sleep duration increased in 2020 and 2021 compared to pre-pandemic times, while the number of naps per day decreased.

Dr. Deoni said that, although mobile devices may lack the accuracy and sensitivity of in-person measurements, they also allow researchers to take measurements from a larger number of people over longer periods of time. Work is ongoing to use these devices to examine potential influences of infant/child physical activity, outdoor exposure, and air quality.

Speaker:

Sean Deoni, PhD

Brown University

Speaker Bio:

I’m an MRI physicist by training, but a pediatric neuroscientist by passion. PhD in MR Physics from the University of Western Ontario and post-docs at King’s College, London and Oxford University where I developed MRI techniques to study brain maturation in infants and children. This work was extended at the Advanced Baby Imaging Lab at Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital, where we initiated some of the largest longitudinal studies of pediatric neurodevelopment (now the cornerstone of our ECHO project). Over the past 3 years I’ve also been involved with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, initiating a new project to assess low field MRI scanners in 25 low and middle income countries, and extend our ECHO project globally.

Date: Monday, October 18th, 1 to 2pm ET