While running through an assessment with a young subject recently,\u00a0Amanda Yagan \u201921 (CLAS)\u00a0asked, \u201cWhat do we use to tell the time?\u201d Without skipping a beat, the boy confidently answered, \u201cAlexa!\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that he had no clue why his answer invoking the smart speaker made his mom and Yagan laugh underscores exactly what Yagan studies: how environmental factors, such as exposure to electronics, shape young brains and bodies.<\/p>\n
As a clinical research assistant in the Advanced Baby Imaging Lab at Rhode Island Hospital, Yagan interviews children, leading them through the Mullen assessment scales cognitive test and iPad games. She also administers MRI and other scans, all in an effort to better understand how brains grow and develop through infancy and childhood, and how factors such as genes, nutrition, exposure to electronics, and sleep shape this development.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love getting to work with kids,\u201d says the speech, language, and hearing sciences major, who radiates such warmth and enthusiasm that it\u2019s easy to imagine just how comfortable she makes these little ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften the children get really shy at the beginning \u2026 and at the end they independently give me hugs, or sometimes they\u2019ll want me to carry them around the lab, and we just hang out and bond as we pick out books for them to take home. I love that we are able to pick up on each other\u2019s energy and know that we are in a safe space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other perks that make her gig so cool? Yagan enjoys regularly having her mind blown by the work of her brilliant colleagues, as well as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation\u2013funded trips to India, Zambia, South Africa, and Uganda to train doctors there to use portable MRI scanners, like the one she\u2019s pictured with here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so excited to go to work\u201d each day, she says. \u201cI come home and I\u2019m so happy.\u201d<\/p>\n