Former NYU Sydney student, Julia Moses recently presented at the 30th Annual Greater New York Conference on Behavioral Research at Fordham University.

Julia presented her research on Infant Studies of Language and Neurocognitive Development. The research is a result of working with Dr. Natalie Brito at Infant Studies of Language and Neurocognitive Development” (ISLAND lab). “The presentation was about how maternal anxiety may have an effect on 3 month old infants. I measured the blinks per minute of the baby during a recorded 5 minute play task with the mother and counted the number of blinks over the time period,” explained Julia. 

“Using the number of blinks as a measure of dopamine production in the infant, we can infer that the rate of blinks per minute is telling us about the baby’s internal state. Through surveys the mother took and counting the blinks, preliminary results have shown that mothers who feel less stressed in the moment correlate with higher blinks in the infant due to (inferred) higher dopamine production in the infant’s brain. ”

“This is very early on into our research so nothing is certain yet as we don’t have enough participants, we are hoping to continue with more studies to build on the research”.