The Child Emotion Research Laboratory is based on two sites on the main campus of the University of Wisconsin.

One laboratory is on the first floor of the W. J. Brogden Psychology Building. It has eight contiguous rooms, two for testing of child participants, one for parent evaluations, one for EEG preparation, a data control room, and three rooms for data analyses, lab administration, and secure data storage. The second laboratory is located on the fifth floor of the Waisman Center, across the street from the University Hospital. This laboratory has one room for child testing, a secure room for data storage, and a large office that houses research staff and students.

Waisman Center 1500 Highland Avenue	W. J. Brogden Psychology Building 1202 West Johnson Street

Laboratory rooms are sound-attenuated, double-walled, and electrically-shielded. The lab has been designed especially for use with young children. The laboratory is designed in a vibrant outer-space motif, with colorful murals on the walls and hallways depicting planets, stars, and bears (who are race and gender neutral—and all wearing electrode caps) flying in rocket ships. Testing and control rooms follow the same theme. All rooms are appropriate for young children, equipped with adjustable furniture with rounded corners; plexiglass safety covers are placed on all electrical outlets. The Psychology Lab testing rooms contain state-of-the-art stimulus presentation, data recording, and laboratory control instrumentation. A NeuroScan Synamps CD/AC High-Speed EEG amplifier has 64 channels for electrophysiological recording. This system is capable of low-noise amplification, 16-bit analog-to-digital conversion, and digital filtering, allowing data acquisition in discrete epochs at rates of 20 KHz (per 32 channel) or up to 1—KHz (for four channels). A second NeuroScan workstation allows for editing, signal processing, and analyses of psychophysiological data. The data collection and control room is interfaced with the subject rooms for audio, video, electrophysiology, stimulus control, and subject response signals. For ERP studies, 17”, 21” and 27” monitors are available for display of stimuli. A second subject room is used mostly for behavioral studies. The room contains four different PCs outfitted with standard and touchscreen monitors and a variety of subject response devices. The room has a one-way mirror and video capabilities. A third room is networked to the data control room and used for parents to participate in structured clinical interviews or computerized questionnaires.

Other resources used by members of the lab include:

1. The UW Psychology Department has many faculty conducting psychophysiological research. Thus, the department commands extensive human resources to support state-of-the-art laboratory facilities. Specifically, the Department employs four full-time, in-house electrical, mechanical, and software engineers.
2. The Waisman Center is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about human development and developmental disabilities throughout the lifespan.
   The center is one of 9 national centers that encompasses a Mental Retardation Developmental Disabilities Research Center and a Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. The Waisman Center is a 198,000 square-foot complex located in the west area of the UW-Madison campus. The center encompasses an eight-floor tower, a one-story annex, and a seven-story addition completed in 2001. Housed in this complex are 60 laboratories for basic and clinical biomedical and behavioral research, a brain imaging center, a clinical bio-manufacturing facility, seven specialty clinics for people with developmental disabilities and their families, numerous early intervention and outreach programs, and a school for children from birth through age six, serving typically developing children and children with disabilities. Fifty faculty representing 26 academic departments of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 300 staff, and more than 250 graduate and post-graduate students work at the Waisman Center. Research activities at the Center includes research on how the nervous system develops, brain-behavior relationships through neuroimaging, the development of speech, language, and communication, the development of sensory and perceptual processes in children, new technologies in gene therapy, and basic biological research on stem cells. The center operates an integrated neuroimaging facility that includes a high field strength MRI scanner and a PET scanner, both supported by full-time expert staff. This unique facility allows center researchers to use the latest imaging techniques to learn about the structure of the brain, with particular emphasis on the neural bases of emotion, attention, language, and other cognitive functions. The Waisman Center provides clinical care through clinics that are operated in collaboration with UW Hospital and Clinics and several UW-Madison Departments. Professionals from many disciplines combine knowledge in the following areas: audiology, biochemical and clinical genetics, nursing, nutrition, occupational therapy, orthopedics, pediatrics, pediatric neurology, pediatric rehabilitation, physical therapy, psychology, social work, and speech and language. The Waisman Center has a Core Grant from NICHD that supplements core services in several areas including computing, instrumentation, human subject recruiting, and computer graphic/printing services.(3) The Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WPRC) is based in the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Center has strong research and teaching links to the UW Psychology Department. The WPRC is one of eight federally supported (NIH-NCRR) National Primate Research Centers and the only one in the Midwest. More than 250 center scientists, through competitive grants, conduct research in primate biology with relevance to human and animal health. The WPRC will provide assays for cortisol samples collected as part of this project. The Assay Services Unit of the WPRC provides up-to-date, efficient and cost-effective hormone measurements in a centralized facility for the Primate Center's core staff, affiliated scientists and collaborators. An additional part of Assay Services' mission involves continuing developments of new methodology and techniques to meet the progressive research requirements of investigators. These developments include non-invasive, non-isotopic assays.
3. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of Wisconsin. The Keck Laboratory is based on the first and second floors of the new addition to the Waisman Center. It houses a new tandem accelerator (NEC deuteron accelerator) for the production of short half-life tracers (e.g., O15) for PET, the GE ADVANCE PET system, a new 3T MR scanner for functional MRI, dedicated fully to research, along with associated radiochemistry labs a new simulator room, image processing areas, conference rooms and office space. The computer servers are located in an air conditioned electronics room and are connected to an expandable 4 kVA APC Symmetra uniterruptible power supply. The servers consist of 6 Dell PowerEdge 2450 machines with dual 833 MHz Intel Pentium III processors and 1 GB of RAM, and a SUN Enterprise 220R with dual UltraSPARC-II processors and 2 GB of RAM. Three of the Dells run Windows 2000 servers, one acts as the domain controller, one handles various administrative tasks such as virus protection asnd software distribution, and thelast is the file and print server with 650 GB of online storage and a 14 x 70 GB DLT tape library for backups. The remaining three Dells are set up as a MOSIX cluster and along with the Sun running Solaris 8, act as application servers for data analysis servers. Workstations are located throughout the facility with 32 dual 1 GHz Pentium III PCs with 512 MB of RAM capable of running either Windows 2000 Professional or RedHat 6.2 Linux. Two Sun Ultra 10s with 440 MHz UltraSPARC-Iii processors and512 MB RAM, a MAC with dual 500 MHz PowerPC G4 processors and 512 MB RAM, and an SGI Octane with 300 MHz MIPS R12000 processor and 1 GB of RAM, are also available. Networked printers include an HP LaserJet 8100DN and HP Color LaserJet 4500HDN, in addition to Canon imageRUNNER 550 and 330 copiers with network printer boards. MRI Facilities: The scanner, 3 Tesla GE SIGNA MRI, installed in October, 2000, has advanced imaging gradients with a maximum amplitude of 40 mT/m and a slew rate of 150 mT/m msec. The ability to develop custom pulse sequences for the scanner is provided by GE using a software development package – EPIC. Both structural and functional brain imaging are done using a quadrature birdcage coil supplied by GE. In November, 2001, a new birdcage coil with roughly 20-30% improved sensitivity over the GE head coil was delivered by Medical Advances. We will also be receiving a localized gradient / RF coil that GE is producing, to be installed around July, 2003. This new coil will have a minimum of 50 mT/m gradients with 500 mT/m/msec slew rates. Visual stimulation can be deliveed by either an advanced fiber optic goggle system (Avotec) interfaced with an eye-tracking system (sampling rate of 50Hz) or using back-projection with an LCD projector and a screen at the end of the table. Auditory stimuli are presented using a pneumatic headphone system (Avotec). The scanner is supported by a full-time physicist, nuclear physics postdocs, and research support staff. To accommodate children to the unique environment of the MRI scanner, the lab houses a simulator room. This room has a mock MRI scanner, another Avotec fiber optic goggle system, and an auditory system with two control computers. This room is used to introduce subjects to the identical experimental procedures that they will experience in the actual scanner to ensure subject comfort and data quality.

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