April 1, 1996
Contact: Kelly C. Lockhart, (615) 322-2706

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The founder of a scientifically based Harvard University child advocacy project will address the consequences of institutionalization on Romanian orphans at the John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development at Vanderbilt's Peabody College April 10.

Mary Carlson's 4 p.m. lecture is titled "Psychological and Neuroendocrinological Sequelae of Early Social Deprivation in Institutionalized Children of Romania" and will take place at Peabody College's MRL Building room 241. Carlson is the Program on Child Rights and Development founder, an associate professor of neuroscience in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an associate professor of population and international health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Carlson integrates ethics and science at the Program on Child Rights and Development to study impaired development and also rehabilitative efforts in Romanian infants institutionalized from birth. Through consultation with international organizations, alternatives to institutional care and more effective methods of rehabilitating children who have been socially deprived, abused or neglected are being examined.

For the past 25 years, Carlson has combined studies of the brain and behavior development in nonhuman primates. Building on evidence that touch is the critical sensory modality for promoting social development in infant primates, her research has been directed at understanding the physiological, anatomical and behavioral basis for the appreciation of touch in primates during infancy, and the consequences of early sensory deprivation on neonatal brain damage on later brain and behavioral development.

Parking is available in the Wesley Place Garage on 21st Avenue South and Scarritt Place at standard Central Parking rates. For more information, call 322-8240.