Sarah Mattson Weller
San Diego State University, CA·Psychology
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), lifelong problems with thinking, behavior and sometimes physical development. FASD is among the most common neurodevelopmental disorders, yet many affected children are never diagnosed.
- Fields
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
fetal alcohol spectrum disorders
prenatal alcohol exposure
neurodevelopmental disorders
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2031
What they work on
- Measure how accurately the FASD-Tree, a web tool recording physical and behavioral features, and BRAIN-online, a web-based cognitive test, classify children aged 6–17 with FASD, alone and combined, by sensitivity and specificity.
- Combine data from the FASD-Tree and BRAIN-online with physical measures from other CIFASD projects, including 3D facial imaging and MorpheusQ, to build a scalable, low-cost aid to standard FASD diagnosis.
- Test BRAIN-online en Español, a Spanish version of the web screening tool, in first- to eighth-graders at risk for FASD and typically developing peers recruited from San Diego County clinics and schools.
- Compare remote BRAIN-online en Español scores with matched in-person neuropsychological tests and parent reports of prenatal alcohol exposure, to measure its sensitivity and specificity in detecting FASD-related cognitive and behavioral effects.
More about the research
Diagnosis is hard because prenatal alcohol exposure is often unreported, evaluations are costly and time-consuming, specialty clinics are few, and wait times are long. The two projects build and test low-cost web-based screening tools. These tools could flag which children most need a full evaluation, making diagnosis faster and easier to reach.
Why it matters
Many children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders go unrecognized or wait a long time for evaluation, which delays support. Low-cost web screening tools, including a Spanish-language version, could help clinics decide who needs a full diagnostic evaluation first. They could also reach more families, including Spanish speakers, and improve prevalence estimates needed to plan intervention resources.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joseph O'Neill
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether trigeminal nerve stimulation, a noninvasive facial nerve stimulation therapy cleared for ADHD, is feasible for children with prenatal alcohol exposure, measuring compliance, side effects and early signs of symptom relief in a pilot phase.
Kevin Williams
North Carolina Central University, NC·Biology
Test how candidate genes, identified as altered in ethanol-exposed mouse limb buds by RNA sequencing, rescue or worsen alcohol-induced fin and limb defects, using gene knockouts in cells, zebrafish and mice.
April Thames
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology
Expand the National Neuropsychology Network with a new Texas clinical research site and enroll over 10,000 additional participants, with emphasis on Black or African American participants and bilingual or monolingual Spanish speakers.
The school
San Diego State University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 142 research doctorates a year.
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