Landau Awarded $1.7M to Study Rare Brain Disorder

The Johns Hopkins University has received a five-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to support research into the cognitive problems experienced by people with a rare genetic disorder known as Williams syndrome.

APS Fellow Barbara Landau, a professor of cognitive science, will be principal investigator. The grant will fund her team's investigation of the origins of spatial impairments suffered by people with this syndrome, which is characterized by difficulty with tasks such as assembling simple puzzles, copying basic patterns and navigating through the physical world.

“We are specifically looking into the hypothesis that certain areas of the brain — the parietal regions, in particular — are the key to those deficits,” said Landau, the Dick and Lydia Todd Professor in the department of cognitive science at the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Williams syndrome, caused when a small amount of genetic material is missing from one human chromosome, occurs in approximately one of every 20,000 live births. The parietal regions are the lobes in each cerebral hemisphere of the brain that lie between the rear — called the “occipital” — and the frontal lobes.

The researchers will test individuals with William syndrome who are between 8 and 15 years old, as well as adults, to ascertain whether the spatial deficits will resolve in adulthood, though Landau hypothesizes that they will not.

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