Center probes mind's mystery

Researchers unrolled a tape measure to ensure that exactly 70 centimeters were between the blank gray screen and the 12-year-old boy sitting in the "astronaut chair" -- so named because of its similar design to the seats on the space shuttle.

Ann M. Skoczenski dimmed the lights as Liv Taunton-Rigby readied Kevin for testing. Naomi Bass sat behind a drawn curtain, monitoring green brain waves as they danced across a dark computer screen.

Kevin, who signed up after receiving a notice about the research at his Waltham public school, watched dozens of gray bean-like shapes wiggle and shimmer until they dropped in number, formed a circle in the middle, and then disappeared. The sequence repeated five times in just a few minutes, like a computer screen saver.

These seemingly simple tests, however, could provide breakthroughs in scientists' understanding of how the eyes and brain create vision, Skoczenski said.

"Vision is not all in the eyes," she said. "A lot of good vision is your brain interpreting what you see."

Skoczenski's test of Kevin's vision and her other vision-related experiments are trying to determine when a child sees a unified pattern. The information could aid in understanding the causes of dyslexia.

Skoczenski's research is one of many projects going on in a nondescript brick building off Trapelo Road on the grounds of the state's Fernald School. Surrounded by a pastoral campus, its unassuming suburban location masks the significant work done inside the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center.

Researchers at the 34-year-old center are conducting some 40 projects aimed at understanding neurological and behavioral development.

The center, named after Eunice Kennedy Shriver for her advocacy for people with mental disabilities, is affiliated with the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. More than 100 employees, many of whom have postdoctorate experience, are seeking to find breakthroughs that could change medical and behavioral science.The research is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the US Department and Health and Human Services, and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities. Researchers have also earned grant money from several state agencies, including the Department of Mental Retardation and the Department of Public Health.

The center focuses on such topics as how important brain systems assemble themselves; the effect of genetic and environmental factors on neurological and behavioral development; and the social policy implications of advances in genetics.

The Shriver Center also houses one of 14 national Mental Retardation Developmental Disabilities Research Centers sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

While the state ponders what to do with the Fernald School and the pastoral land surrounding it, officials at both the Shriver Center and the UMass Medical Center said the center is there to stay. Details on the agreement that would allow the Shriver Center to continue in its current site -- even if the state sells the land -- were not immediately available.

Peter McCaffery, a principal investigator at the center, works in a lab filled with glass vials, test tubes, and computers. He concentrates on how the brain develops.

"All the important discoveries," he said, "each and every one of them started because someone was looking at the brain."

McCaffery's research focuses on vitamin A and retinoic acid, a form of vitamin A. He and his colleagues are trying to understand its connection to, among other things, autism, depression, and schizophrenia. In experiments last year, they used mice to study the effects of vitamin A, giving it to pregnant mice at various stages to see how it affects brain development. One goal is to identify the stages in embryonic development when retinoic acid is most active.

"It's not something that you would see directly cure the diseases," McCaffery said. But it is information that could lead to important advances in treating little-understood disorders such as schizophrenia.

Teresa Mitchell is also working on questions related to brain function: She's studying what happens in the brain when development differs from the norm. Specifically, she's examining auditory and visual development in hearing and deaf individuals.

"Do they literally see better than us?" she asked of deaf people. "No, they don't. But what they do see can take on different meanings or could be more or less important."

Science, Mitchell explained, already recognizes that deaf people's visual responses are faster and more accurate. But that's not because their eyes are stronger; it's because their brains are different.

Mitchell is studying children to explore how these differences between hearing and nonhearing individuals emerge. She said she wants to know what is optimal development for deaf children so caregivers -- doctors, parents, teachers -- can tell if a child is falling behind and needs extra help.

But Mitchell's work, like much of the research that takes place at the center, has larger scientific implications. "It reminds people," she said, "that development isn't a linear, one-track thing."