Anna Karoline Almeida, from Mossoró, is about to make her dream come true: to do scientific research abroad. She was recently accepted into a doctoral program at the University of South Florida (USF) in the United States, where she will continue her study of language development in atypical and typical children, which she began during her master's degree in neuroengineering at the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) in Macaíba, Rio Grande do Norte.
Research underway links communication difficulties to brain hyperactivity in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Anna wants to understand whether reducing this excessive brain activity can help language development in atypical individuals. To do this, she uses a non-invasive brain stimulation process, called neurostimulation, to reduce hyperactivity while applying a set of language stimulation techniques.
“Children with ASD tend to be very restless. In many cases, a common characteristic is the difficulty they have in communicating verbally and making eye contact. This happens due to the excess information reaching their brains. What we are proposing is to use neurostimulation to reduce this load of brain activity and apply language development methods to assist in the child’s communication process,” explains the researcher.
During the study, external electrodes are placed on areas of the child's head. Neurostimulation occurs for approximately 20 minutes, over the course of 15 days of the experiment. During this period, while the tests are being carried out, the children perform controlled reading and conversation activities. The goal is to understand whether, throughout the process, there is an improvement in the patient's general communicative aspect.
According to Anna, the results of the research so far are promising. “We applied a questionnaire at the end of each session with the parents. And the responses indicate that they noticed improvements in their children in several aspects: improved sleep quality; physiological improvements; language development, especially non-verbal language, and communication. We have several reports in this regard, but we have to wait until the end of the research to check all the results,” she says.
Anna has a degree in speech therapy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and became interested in studying language after her grandmother suffered a stroke, which left her with speech impairments. “After the stroke, my grandmother developed aphasia (difficulty in understanding and expressing words) and needed the support of a speech therapist to rehabilitate her speech. That was when I understood the importance of speech therapy in this process of stimulating language,” she says.
During her master's degree in neuroengineering, Anna realized that language stimulation can be performed in multiple ways: in people recovering from neurological problems, like her grandmother; in atypical children, like those on the autistic spectrum; and also in typical children who have difficulties in some aspect of the initial development of speech and language.
This last point will be the focus of the study that the researcher wants to develop during her doctorate in the United States. She intends to work with atypical and typical bilingual children from the Latino community living in Florida, who have difficulty communicating in English and Spanish. “At USF, they don’t work with ASD, but with children who have difficulty in the early stages of the language learning process. So, I’m going to work with language disorders in children exposed to bilingualism who have delays in the development of communication.”
The researcher is expected to move to the United States in August. The doctorate in Florida is expected to last between four and five years. After this period, Anna hopes to return to Brazil to apply the practical results of her research. “ISD taught me a lot and opened doors for me to the world. I hope that, with the doctorate, we will be able to have a better perspective on language development in children and that we can equalize inequalities that exist in child development.”
Master's Degree in Neuroengineering at ISD
The first program recognized by the Ministry of Education in this area of knowledge in Brazil, the ISD Master's in Neuroengineering seeks to train professionals with a broader perspective, articulating neuroscience with engineering. This future researcher must be competent in the scientific, political, ethical and social spheres, in addition to developing the ability to work in inter and multidisciplinary teams.
The central theme of the course is neuroengineering, an interdisciplinary research area that integrates neuroscience and engineering methods to study the functioning of the nervous system and develop solutions for the limitations and dysfunctions associated with this system. The program's structure was designed to overcome the barriers that exist between undergraduate degrees in exact, biological and human sciences. The ISD master's degree is free and lasts 24 months.
About ISD
The Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) is a Social Organization linked to the Ministry of Education (MEC) and includes the Edmond and Lily Safra International Neuroscience Institute and the Anita Garibaldi Center for Health Education and Research, both in Macaíba. ISD's mission is to promote education for life, forming citizens through integrated teaching, research and extension actions, in addition to contributing to a fairer and more humane transformation of Brazilian social reality.
