By Miriam Bernard
Welcome to a collaboration with the NODCC and its key researchers from around the globe, in which we introduce our community members to the specific research of friends of the NODCC. Today we’re proud to introduce you to Jasmin Turner, MA Clinical Psychology, and second-year PhD student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Iowa.
Musical theater student turned brain researcher is surely not a common life path, but along the way, researcher and doctoral student Jasmin Turner realized her heart and goals were in the field of psychology, and working with individuals with DCCs. Jasmin’s brain research journey began when she moved to California in 2014. She enrolled at Pasadena City College to earn psychology prerequisites. A helpful professor recommended she get research experience, since her background was not in the research field. She reached out to a program at CalTech and was put in touch with Dr. Lynn K. Paul just as Dr. Paul was starting her infant and child ACC study. Jasmin became her research assistant, monitoring incoming data, answering emails, and speaking with parents.
Jasmin recalls, “One of the things I noticed in talking to parents was a lot of them had been told worst case scenarios by their doctors. So many parents were told their child was not going to walk, or not going to talk. Eventually we had enough data that I could confidently say, ‘If your child is an isolated case, almost all of our kids in the study are walking and talking. It was important for them to know this, because if you believe your child is not going to walk or talk, you’re less motivated to encourage those behaviors.’
As Jasmin was working with Dr. Paul, she earned her MA in Clinical Psychology at Cal State University, Northridge. Jasmin is most interested in emotion regulation, and now that Dr. Paul’s study includes older kids, it’s clear that this is impacted and can be challenging. During her Master’s studies, Jasmin largely studied borderline personality disorder, since emotion regulation is such a key feature of that. However, working with Dr. Paul allowed Jasmin to realize she really loved working with families.
Jasmin’s first NODCC conference was in California in 2018. She recalls, “As a researcher you spend so much time staring at numbers in an Excel sheet or coding. So, to then get to meet the families I’ve spoken to, or to meet the babies whose brains I’ve looked at, that was a consolidating moment for me, where I realized ‘This is what I want to study, and this is what I want to do with my life.’” She feels grateful that Dr. Lynn Paul has been an incredible mentor in leading her to this field of work.
At the next conference in Texas in 2022, Jasmin presented to conference attendees on Personality and Social Cognition. She recalls realizing she was about to get up and speak about adults with DCC, but to that point she had largely worked with babies. Before that session, she saw a large group of adults with DCCs sitting together in the hotel, and asked if she could join them to get to know them better and incorporate their experiences into her presentation. That moment turned into an hour-long “mini therapy session”, and Jasmin recalls thinking, “I want to keep doing this.”
Over time, working with Adults with DCCs has become her main role in the NODCC. She is starting an adult committee that involves a monthly Zoom session, and occasional special presentations, like one coming up called “Knowledge is Power” which is a lecture to help adults with DCCs better understand the brain. Some months, Jasmin asks members of the group to share and present on their own life experiences. She sees her role as trying to give the adults a voice and find ways to support them. She is trying to recruit adults with DCCs as ambassadors; presenting and doing more to increase their visibility and activity in the organization.
When Jasmin finished her master’s degree, Dr. Paul received her R01 Research Grant for the ACC infant study, and at that time Jasmin began completing parent interviews for the study. Jasmin loved that part of the job, because she’d remember or reference what a child was able to do the last time she’d spoken with their parents six months prior, and remind families their child was now able to do so much more than they had previously. This provided invaluable insight and hope for families who might have otherwise felt their child’s progress was inhibited or less ground-breaking giving them much-needed perspective.
The main project Jasmin has been working on with Dr. Paul is examining temperament in the first few years, looking at how engaged children are and what emotions they show, then comparing that to children with autism, Down syndrome and typically developing children.
Jasmin mentions that when she gets to post-doctorate work, she’d really like to find out what subcortical parts of a child’s mind are processing correctly, but parts of their experience may be different. Long term, any child with a brain that’s different comes with many social-emotional difficulties. That then can potentially lead to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Jasmin explains, “How do we protect these kids early enough and give them the support they need to reduce secondary mental health outcomes? Can we remove the unnecessary part that comes with being different in a really tough world? For many children, so much of the social anxiety and depression is because of how the world is treating them, and not because of the way their brain works.”
Jasmin just wrapped her first major PhD project in which she looked at the brain regions involved in cognitive empathy vs. emotional empathy in adults with autism. The study is under review, and the NODCC will share a link when the study becomes available.
Recently, Jasmin, our previous researcher’s corner featured researcher Ella Bohlman, and Dr. Lauren Haisley, PhD, LP. collaborate on another study called “Emotional Expression in Infants with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum – The role of colossal Connectivity in Early Temperament”. It is currently under review, and you can read the abstract of that study HERE.
When asked how her research impacts families, Jasmin shared “I think about the families and the adults that I work with a lot. They are my ‘why’.” She explained how the data they now have provides important insights to the experience of raising a child with a DCC. For instance, she’s learned in children with ACC, many benefit from speech therapy. Another conclusion she’s drawn is that many parents notice that mid-childhood years are not as challenging, and families may be less likely to seek therapies during those years, but social demands go up in the teen years, so trainings as social demands increase are a good idea. Jasmin’s goal is to get knowledge like this in the hands of parents.
When not busy being a PhD student and doing research, Jasmin spends time with her adorable ten-year-old dog, Oliver, and two-year-old cat, Madeline. She likes to sketch, and as a new hobby, has turned her neuroanatomy class into an anatomical sketch book. In her prior life she was a dancer, and she loves hiking, despite admitting she doesn’t have as much time for those activities as she’d like.
The NODCC is so grateful for the opportunity to interview Jasmin and learn about her passion for brain research, and babies, children, and adults with DCCs. We’re grateful to have her as part of our NODCC family!