Our ability to accurately assess and evaluate the neurobehavioral integrity of the newborn and young infant is of critical importance for research and clinical practice. It also has social policy implications because of the number of infants at risk born every year that need services.

The national epidemic in opioid exposed infants in the U.S. has shined the spotlight on services for these infants. Follow-up clinics for opioid exposed infants are rare and the long-term outcome of these infants is virtually unknown.

The number of infants exposed to opioids during pregnancy in the United States has increased by 333% in the past two decades.  Every 15 minutes, a baby is born exposed to opioids or one newborn every 15 minutes.  These infants are at high risk for developing Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS) - the drug withdrawal syndrome that occurs due to the abrupt discontinuation of prenatal opioids following delivery.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a group of conditions that can have a devastating and significant impact on the lives of children and their families. Unfortunately, although developmental problems in children with autism emerge in the second year of life, reliable diagnosis is challenging until children are 2 to 3 years of age or later. This leaves many families “in limbo” as they seek diagnostic clarification.

Read Dr. Lester's Q&A in The Boston Globe's weekly Ocean State Innovators column about using cry analysis with infants with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.

Please read Dr. Lester and his colleagues' recent publicantion, "Epigenetic Programming by Maternal Behavior in the Human Infant." They looked at more than 40 full-term, healthy infants and their mothers, one-half of whom breastfed for the first five months and one-half of whom did not. They measured the cortisol stress reactivity in infant saliva using a mother-infant interaction procedure and the DNA methylation (changing the activity of the DNA segment without changing its sequence) of an important regulatory region of the glucocorticoid receptor gene which regulates development, metabolism, and immune response. According to Dr. Lester, "Breastfeeding was associated with decreased DNA methylation and decreased cortisol reactivity in the infants. In other words, there was an epigenetic change in the babies who were breastfed, resulting in reduced stress than those who were not breastfed."

Dr. Lester and Dr. Czynski talk about a new program that focuses on the future of babies born with opioid dependence on WPRI 12.

Please read the New York Times Magazine cover story for Mother's Day by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan on "Children of the Opioid Epidemic."

Dr. Barry Lester was interviewed by Daniel Keating of the Child and Family Blog and featured in their blog. The interview discussed how parenthood policies could prevent early stress from causing epigenetic changes in children.

Dr. Amy Salisbury was interviewed by Psychiatry Weekly on her study, "Newborn Infant Behaviors Following In Utero Exposure to SSRIs and Maternal Depression."

Please read our recent publication, where we found that the single greatest contributor to long-term neurobehavioral development in preterm infants is maternal involvement— and that a single-family room NICU allows for the greatest and most immediate opportunities for maternal involvement resulting in improvements in neurodevelopmental outcomes at 18 months

The Care New England's Psychiatry Research Division at Butler Hospital and its Autism Research Unit at Women and Infants Hospital have joined forces with the state's leading neuroscience research institutions to significantly advance the understanding and treatment of such brain-centered disorders and diseases as autism, epilepsy, stroke, Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury. To read more about this promising collaboration, click on the PDF

Dr. Barry Lester was recently interviewed by the Journal of International Innovation on epigenetics and child development as well as the how and why of epigentics. He believes that one way in which the environment (both prenatal and postnatal) alters behavior is through epigenetic mechanisms. This has become a major focus at our Center.

PROVIDENCE -Elyse Arruda spends a lot of time at Women and Infants' Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It has been her son Cameron's home since he was born 17 weeks early in June.

Preterm infants who are hospitalized in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) private rooms have improved medical and neurobehavioral outcomes, according to an article published online September 22 in Pediatrics. These improvements are related to increased developmental support and maternal care, which would also improve outcomes in open-bay or other NICU models of care, the researchers write.

By many measures, a neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, with single-family rooms produces better results than one with a shared, open-bay arrangement, a new study has found

Assessment and Evaluation of the High Risk Neonate: The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale

University scientists are key players in a new program aiming to advance autism research by creating a statewide registry of patients who have been diagnosed as on the spectrum. Spearheaded by the Rhode Island Consortium of Autism Research and Treatment, also known as RI-CART, the program gained funding through a variety of sources, including two recent grants totaling over $1 million.

New research offers the tantalizing possibility that an innovative tool could decipher what an infant's cries mean and assess if he or she is at risk for developmental problems.