In this competing continuation grant we propose to continue testing samples of infants born to diabetic mothers (IDM) and health control infants. The hypothesis under investigations is that iron deficiency with or without fetal hypoxia can selectively damage the structures in the medial temporal lobe that are involved in explicit memory; thus, we predict that IDM infants may be at risk for developing impairments in memory. In our current grant we have focused on evaluating auditory and visual recognition memory in newborn through 12 month old infants. In this competing continuation grant, we intend to a) enroll subjects for one additional year, and b) test these subjects, as well as our existing cohort of subjects, through the age of 4 years. In the first year of life we will use electrophysiological (event-related potentials, or ERPs) and behavioral (e.g., looking time) tools to evaluate infants recognition memory of social) e.g., mother's voice, face) stimuli, as well as evaluate simple auditory discrimination abilities (speech vs. non-speech). At 12 months of age the Bayley exam will be performed, as well as the first of three tests involving deferred imitation abilities (a task presumed to be mediated by the hippocampus). Deferred imitation will also be performed at 18 and 24 months of age. At 36 and 48 months we will evaluate hippocampal and amygdala functioning by studying children's performance in (respectively) a Delayed Non-Matching to Sample paradigm, and in a task of visual recognition of emotion. At all ages beyond 1 year testing will involve the recording of high-density (128 channels) ERPs. Finally, at 48 months of age the WPPSI IQ test will be administered. We are hypothesizing that our IDM infants will show selective deficits in our temporal lobe (memory) tasks, and will perform in the normal range on our IQ outcome measures.
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