We love spending time at the Children's Museum and meeting potential participants! A big thank you to our RA's Eram and Sahar for helping out!

UH Receives $11.8M NIH Grant to Study Early Language Development in Toddlers | University of Houston University of Houston researchers will follow thousands of Houston toddlers to better understand how language develops in early childhood and why some children experience speech delays.

Proud to be one of many incredible investigators in this new Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders. We will follow 3,600 toddlers to better understand how language skills emerge and why some children experience delays.

Keep your eyes peeled. We'll be hiring soon! 👀

Prof. @jeremyborjon.com and Manash are in Berlin at the @mps-cognition.bsky.social’s 13th MindBrainBody Symposium presenting a poster on some exciting preliminary data from the lab!

Manash Sahoo is pictured with his poster for "Multidimensional Physiological States of Infant Visual Attention -- Manash K. Sahoo, Katherine D. Rhodes, and Jeremy I. Boron".

Katherine Rhodes is pictured with her poster for "Physiology Meets Baby Talk: Cardiac Foundations of Infant-Directed Speech -- Katherine D. Rhodes, Lillyan Arriaga, Manash K. Sahoo, and Jeremy I. Borjon".

Katherine Rhodes is pictured with her poster for "Physiology Meets Baby Talk: Cardiac Foundations of Infant-Directed Speech -- Katherine D. Rhodes, Lillyan Arriaga, Manash K. Sahoo, and Jeremy I. Borjon". Manash Sahoo is pictured with his poster for "Multidimensional Physiological States of Infant Visual Attention -- Manash K. Sahoo, Katherine D. Rhodes, and Jeremy I. Boron". Director: Jeremey I. Borjon Lab Manager: Katherine D. Rhodes Graduate Student: Manash K. Sahoo

Developing Systems Lab had a wonderful time attending ICDL Prague 2025!

Another wonderful lab dinner in the books and a big welcome to our new graduate student Laura!

Yesterday we had the honor to join Molina Healthcare in celebrating expecting mothers!

Thank you to EnvisionBOX (@wimpouw.bsky.social, @jamestrujillo.bsky.social, @babajideowoyele.bsky.social, and @sarkadava.bsky.social) for hosting an excellent summer school in Amsterdam on computer vision and advanced multimodal techniques. We learned a lot and had a great time!

Lab Happy Hour in downtown Houston!

Please add us!

Does a Baby’s Heart Rate Determine Their Talking? Many things have to go right in order for babies to learn to talk. Recent research highlights the role of something that might come as a surprise: heart rate.

Beautiful blog post from @psychologytoday.com on our recent @pnas.org paper!

An infant and parent talking together. Stock photo.

Researchers tracked babies’ heart rates and found a decelerating heart rate was associated with the production of words, showing that the autonomic nervous system, which regulates heart rate, interacts with speech production. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

MSN spotlight on our new @pnas.org article!

These findings link fluctuations in autonomic nervous system activity with language production. We hope they provide new avenues for understanding the extended systems supporting language development and help us to find possible markers for early intervention in at-risk infants.

4/end

Amazingly, vocalizations produced just before the trough, while heart rate is decelerating, were more likely to be recognized as a word by naive listeners!

3/4

Infants were most likely to produce a vocalization when their heart rate fluctuations reached a peak (local maximum) or trough (local minimum). Vocalizations produced at the peak were longer than expected by chance.

2/4

Recognizability and timing of infant vocalizations relate to fluctuations in heart rate | PNAS For human infants, producing recognizable speech is more than a cognitive process. It is a motor skill that requires infants to learn to coordinate...

First paper from the lab is officially published in PNAS!

We demonstrate ongoing fluctuations in heart rate coincide with vocal production and word formation in 24-mo-old infants.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

1/4

Join us!

Accepting applications for PhD students to join the lab through the University of Houston’s Integrative Program in Developmental, Cognitive, and Behavioral Neuroscience.

Applications due Dec 15!

uh.edu/class/psycho...

Hello Blue Sky! We’re the Developing Systems Lab at the University of Houston!

Check out our cool work at www.borjonlab.com and keep your eyes peeled on this page for updates! 👀

This is awesome, thank you! Would you mind adding us?