15 years of SL research has taught me that the nature of the input really matters for SL (perceptual, representational, familiarity). And SL *rapidly* modulates the infant brain including perceptual systems. But we have challenges to overcome as we develop as a field. #iasl22

Big challenges for my area: understanding how these short-term learning effects give rise to longer-term developmental changes. And the crucial importance of returning to realities from an infant’s real-life input to guide our learning paradigms and theoretical questions. #IASL22

We'll have a quiet week in the lab next week with our researchers, Dr. Sabrina Burr, Dr. Ola Dopierala and Zohreh Soleimani attending and presenting at ICIS 2022 (ICIS)! We're excited to hear about all of the new findings in developmental psychology when they're back 😄

A huge congratulations to our postdoc, Dr. Dopierala, on receiving the Outstanding Dissertation Award at #ICIS2022 for her work completed at the University of Warsaw (Uniwersytet Warszawski). We are incredibly lucky and grateful to work with such a brilliant researcher!

#fNIRS2022 is upon us! Our researcher, Dr Ola Dopierala 🐝, will be virtually presenting in Gather Town tomorrow for fNIRS 2022! Please look out for her poster on 'Moving towards naturalistic infant fNIRS - a Pilot Study' to see the exciting things that have been brewing in the lab!

Our researchers Dr. Sabrina Burr and Dr Ola Dopierala 🐝 in action in Boston at #fNIRS2022 🥳. It's absolutely wonderful to see all of their hard work being celebrated and showcased! Society for functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Interested in a broad overview of the current status of optical imaging of the human brain from a great large team of authors including our director, Lauren Emberson? See this link for #Neurophotonics' special issue: tinyurl.com/ydxrdcn5 🧠😊

Asking #Neurodevelopmental twitterverse for help! At Baby Learning Lab we are exploring new ways to learn about babies' brains and want to give them a Gadget Hat! Any tips on how to integrate head cam with #fNIRS cap? What worked, what didn't work, what to pay attention to?

Come and do your MA/PhD in the Baby Learning Lab at UBC Psychology or Neuroscience @ UBC. We study the neuro-cognitive mechanisms that support infant learning and perception. We're doing some very naturalistic fNIRS studies and also plan to do neonatal/premie fNIRS. Please RT!

Meta-analysis on attrition rates in infant fNIRS studies just ACCEPTED! 16-17 months from submission to acceptance. Not bad for COVID era review processes. Will tweet the final version.

Are you interested in talking to science profs at UBC, including our Director (Lauren Emberson)? The UBC Neuroscience Club is hosting an in-person event on November 25th from 6-8pm where you can do just that. Please see this link to RSVP: tinyurl.com/mvyezb4s. The deadline is tomorrow!

Is it Christmas morning already? Unboxing the new fNIRS systems that’s just arrived at the Baby Learning Lab - LUMO is here! Lauren Emberson Gowerlabs

New pre-print looking at the development of social perception networks in low- and middle-income infants. Work funded by the Gates Foundation in collaboration with Sabrina Burr LAURA PIRAZZOLI Dr Ola Dopierala 🐝 Vikranth Bejjanki @CharlesaNelson1 Lauren Emberson psyarxiv.com/5wchq

New paper published looking at lexical comprehension and anticipation/prediction abilities from 12-24 months: They're tightly linked. Work funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and NIH in collaboration with Tracy Reuter, Carolyn Mazzei, Casey Lew-Williams, Lauren Emberson onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

New mini paper published reviewing neuroimaging studies looking at infants' brains at play by Lauren Emberson and Dr Ola Dopierala 🐝. Work funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and Gates Foundation tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

New research article published examining the top-down-modulated motion perception capabilities in 6-8 month year old infants by Dr. Gabriel (Naiqi) Xiao and Lauren Emberson. Work funded by the NIH, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the NSERC / CRSNG. doi.org/10.1177/095679…

We just wanted to take the time today to congratulate our principle investigator, Dr. Lauren Emberson, with her recent promotion to an Associate Professor with tenure here at the University of British Columbia! Congratulations Lauren Emberson! 🥳

We would just like to take the time to congratulate one of our graduate students, Zohreh Soleimani, on her huge accomplishment of successfully defending her master's thesis and progressing to her PhD! Fantastic job and we all look forward to the great things you do next! 🎉

Two key limitations of fNIRS are anatomical co-registration and variation on channel placement across participants/ages. We present a scalp parcellation approach that connects these two and in the context of a longitudinal sample! Check it out. spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-pro…

New research study examining how the top-down perceptual modulation in infants, 10-13 months, is specific to own-race faces by Dr. Gabriel (Naiqi) Xiao, Hila Ghersin, Natasha Dombrowski, Alexandra Boldin, and Lauren Emberson. Work funded by NIH, James S. McDonnell Foundation, NSERC / CRSNG. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…