Jan 28 2009

January 28, 2009
Reporter Si Amick

President Robinson called upon Scott Mosley to open the meeting with a word of prayer followed by the pledge of allegiance. John Hanson asked that all remember to contribute to the cart fund each week and then introduced the visitors. Lynn did a wonderful job with health and happiness and now we all know we still have a major problem in Washington.

Remember the district conference is May,19 2009. Please see Jeanette Coulter about registration.

We had two classification speeches by Mr. Jeff Baldwin and Chief Brian Buck. Both did a wonderful job and it is always interesting to learn about the personal lives of our members.

President Robinson presided over the induction of our two newest members Zeke Riddle and Michael Cromer. Zeke is with Prudential Palmetto Realtors and Michael is with First Community Bank. A warm Rotary welcome to you both.

Lynn Richards introduced her husband, Dr. John E. Richards as our speaker.

Dr. Richards is the Interim Chair at USC’s Psychology Department where his primary studies are the brain activities of infants. He has been instrumental in obtaining major grants for the USC’s Psychology Department for this important work. He performed test on Ginny and Eddie, which they both passed with flying colors. We must remember these are the same test that one year old children routinely pass.

Dr. Richards is currently the principal investigator on two research grants. A grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, focuses on the development of sustained attention in infants ranging in ages from two to six months. Dr. Richards also received a grant from the National Science Foundation, Major Research Instrumentation Award, to develop a high-density EEG/ERP laboratory for the study of developmental cognitive neuroscience.

Dr. Richards has three related research themes:
• The first theme is the development of sustained attention in young infants. This attention phase may be distinguished from other types of attention (e.g., stimulus orienting, automatic interrupt, attention termination). Sustained attention shows developmental changes from 2 to 6 months of age and is closely related to changes in the brain centers controlling attention.

• The second theme is the development of extended fixations to television programs in the first two years. Young infants do not distinguish between abstract patterns and story-like television programs, but at the end of two years young children do.
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• Third, Dr. Richards is now using EEG and ERP in the study of saccade planning, its development in the first few months of infancy, and its relation to cortical areas controlling eye movements. He also is using structural MRI of infants along with ERP to study the cortical sources of the behavior associated with planned eye movements.