Inge-Marie Eigsti

brain ime brain

Inge-Marie Eigsti, Ph.D.

Research Fellow
Columbia University Department of Psychiatry
and The Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology
Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Department of Psychiatry
1300 York Avenue, Box 140
New York, NY 10021

Phone: (212) 746-3648 (Cornell)
(212) 543-6919 (Columbia)
Fax: (212) 746-5755
Email: ie2004@columbia.edu

Last Revised: July 2003

Research

My research addresses a fundamental issue in human cognition: how constraints imposed by brain development and core neurocognitive processes impact on more complex aspects of cognition and learning, with an emphasis on language acquisition. As a scientist, I am intrigued by the interaction of language acquisition and brain development. As a clinician, I am motivated by the prospect of understanding the puzzles presented by atypical development and its consequences, and what implications this might have for intervention. Although most research on language acquisition and neurocognitive processes is based on typically developing learners, the study of perturbations in development can often lead to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of growth and change. I use several converging approaches to study these issues, including behavioral paradigms and structural and functional imaging in both atypical and normal populations.
My past work has involved behavioral studies of language development in autism and maltreatment, and language creation in typical adults.
In my more recent research, I have focused on the neurological mechanisms underlying joint attention in autism, drawing on a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging methods. A second line of work in collaboration with BJ Casey and Walter Mischel explores the longitudinal relationship between behavior regulation and brain development, as well as genetic influences, in children originally assessed at age 18 months, and currently 12-22 years old.

Background

December 2002: NYS License to practice psychology.

November 2002: Lucia Eigsti Magnuson ( see a photo ); already she's contributing to science . Incidentally, she was described as "one cute baby" by Randy Cohen, the Ethicist for the NY Times; read the back story.

July 30 – August 3, 2001, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Neurobiology of developmental disabilities in children
BJ Casey and Yuko Munakata, Instructors

September, 2001, University of Rochester.
Dual Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Dissertation: Word learning and memory functions in young children with autism ( download a pdf ).
Advisor: Loisa Bennetto

See some of the “eigles” stimuli from this project, and just how much fun it is testing children!
Sample Trial A: Initial teaching objects ; Test objects
Sample Trial B: Initial teaching objects ; Test objects
Child performing count-mass noun task .
Administering the working memory (A not B) task.

2000 - 2001: Clinical Internship, Child and Adolescent Psychology; University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Psychiatry.

May, 1999, University of Rochester.
M.A. in Clinical Psychology.
M.A. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

1993 - 1995, ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab) in Kyoto, Japan
Psycholinguistics research on visual perception of speech, with Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson.

June, 1993. The University of Chicago
A.B. in Linguistics with honors.

January, 1991. Kokusai Kaiwa Gakuin, Tokyo, Japan.
Intensive 8-month course in Japanese.
(Look for the neural correlates of Japanese in my brain ).

Honors and Research Support

National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) Young Investigator Award, “Joint attention and core attentional mechanisms in autism spectrum disorders,” 7/1/03 – 6/30/05.
NIMH Small Business Grant R03, “CaseIQ-ASD: Ratings Scale Toolkit for ASD Clinical Research,” 9/30/2003 – 3/31/2004, Clinical Consultant.
Sackler Institute Small Grant, 10/02-10/03.
NIMH Dissertation Research Grant in Developmental Psychopathology, “Word learning and memory functions in young children with autism,” R03 (MH61032-01), 1/1/00 – 12/31/01.
Language Learning Award ($10,000), April, 2000.
Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP) Dissertation Grant Award, December, 1999.
Goethe Institute Distinguished Scholar of German, 1989.

Publications

Durston, S, Tottenham, NT, Thomas, KM, Davidson, MC, Eigsti, IM, Yang, Y, Ulug, AM, & Casey, BJ. (2003). Differential Patterns of Striatal Activation in Young Children with and without ADHD. Biological Psychiatry, 53 (10 ), 871-878.
Eigsti, IM, Bennetto, L, & Dadlani, M (In review). Syntactic development in autism: Beyond pragmatics.
Eigsti, IM & Cicchetti, Dante. (2004). The impact of child maltreatment on expressive syntax at 60 months. Developmental Science , 7 (1), 88-102.
Eigsti, IM & Shapiro, T (2003). A systems neuroscience approach to autism: Biological, cognitive and clinical perspectives. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Review, 9, 205-215.
Hudson, C.L. & Eigsti, I.M. (2003). Lexical competency, the overt expression of grammatical structure, and contrasts between pidgins and creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 18(1) , 1-79.
Vatikiotis-Bateson E, Eigsti IM, Yano S, & Munhall KG (1998). Eye movement of perceivers during audiovisual speech perception. Perception and Psychophysics, 60 (6), 926-940.
Vatikiotis-Bateson E, Munhall KG, Garcia F & Eigsti IM (1996). Characterizing audiovisual information during speech. Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing , Vol. 1, 175-177.
Vatikiotis-Bateson E, Eigsti IM & Yano S (1994). Measurement of listener eye movements during audiovisual perception. Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Japan, March, 679-80.
Eigsti IM, Vatikiotis-Bateson E, & Yano S. (1994). Contrasts in listener eye movements during audiovisual perception with stimuli differing in size. Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Japan , October, 481-482.
McCullough KE, Pedelty L, & Eigsti IM. (1995). A few things gesture can tell us about language breakdown and neurological syndromes. Brain and Cognition 28 (1) 110.

Invited Presentations

University of California – Berkeley, Department of Psychology, 2004.
University of Denver, Department of Psychology, 2004.
Penn State University, Department of Psychology, 2004.
McGill University, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, 2004.
Queen’s University, Department of Psychology, 2003.
Brooklyn College, Department of Psychology, 2003.
University of Connecticut, Department of Psychology, 2003.
University of Madison – Wisconsin. Department of Psychology
(2002), Department of Communication Disorders, 2003.
Barnard College, Department of Psychology, 2003.
ATR Human Information Sciences Laboratory. Kyoto, Japan, 2001.
Columbia University, Department of Psychology, 2001.
New York University, Department of Psychology, 2000.

Oral Conference Presentations

Eigsti, IM & Bennetto, L (November, 2002). Syntactic delays in autism: Relationships between language and neuropsychological factors. Boston University Conference on Language Development . Boston, MA.
Eigsti, IM & Bennetto, L (November, 2001). Syntactic and memory functions in young children with autism. International Society for Developmental Psychobiology . San Diego, CA.
Hudson, Carla L & Eigsti, IM (January, 2001). Lexical fluency, the overt expression of grammatical structure, and the differences between pidgins and creoles. Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics . Washington, DC.
Eigsti, IM, Newport, EL, Aslin, RN, Nordeen, E, Williams, H, & Nordeen, K (November, 1998). Creolization in zebra finch song: Improving on the input? Boston University Conference on Language Development . Boston, MA.
Eigsti, IM, Munhall, KG, Yano, S, & Vatikiotis-Bateson, E (August, 1995). Effects of Listener Expectation on Eye Movement Behavior in Audiovisual Perception. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences . Stockholm, Sweden.
Eigsti, IM (January, 1995). Listener eye movements in multimodal communication. ATR International Symposium on Face and Object Recognition '95 . Kyoto, Japan.

Poster Presentations

Casey BJ, Tottenham N, Eigsti IM, Davidson MC, Watts R, Altemus M, & Aronson J (June, 2003). Hippocampal and Amygdala Development following Institutionalization and Subsequent Adoption. Human Brain Mapping. New York, NY.
Eigsti IM, Tottenham N, Davidson MC & Casey BJ (April, 2003). Effects of institutionalization on later brain development and behavior regulation. Cognitive Neuroscience Society. New York, NY.
Eigsti, IM, Munson, SF, Tottenham, N, Thomas, KM, Durston, S & Casey, BJ (April, 2002). Neural and behavioral correlates of institutionalization. Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco, CA.
Eigsti, IM & Bennetto, L (April, 2001). Working memory and distraction in young children with autism. Society for Research in Child Development . Minneapolis, MN.
Eigsti, IM & Cicchetti, D (April, 1999). Language development in maltreated children. Society for Research in Child Development. Albuquerque, NM.
Eigsti, IM & Hudson, C (April, 1999). Short-term language creation: Interdependence of grammatical structure and the lexicon. Society for Research in Child Development. Albuquerque, NM.
McCullough, KE, Pedelty, L, & Eigsti, IM (May, 1993). Left hemisphere phenomena in language and gesture. Theoretical and Experimental Neuropsychology . Montreal, Canada.
Pedelty, L, McCullough, KE, & Eigsti, IM (May, 1993). Spatial characteristics of gesture in right hemisphere damaged speakers. Theoretical and Experimental Neuropsychology. Montreal, Canada.