Child and Family Asthma Study Center

Child and Family Asthma Study Center family room.

In this custom-designed psychophysiology lab, our faculty, residents and fellows study the mechanisms by which the mind affects the body in psychosomatic illness by measuring heart rate and heart rate variability under lab stress conditions.

State-of-the-Art, Interactive Research Setting

This specialized research center is a lab set up like a comfortably furnished family room but wired to gather audio, video and biophysical data. Researchers can observe children individually—while they watch a movie, for example—or as they interact with their families.

Professors Bruce D. Miller, MD and Betsy L. Wood, PhD in the Child and Family Asthma Study Center monitoring room.

Behind the scenes, monitoring equipment lets researchers review synchronous video of the child, the whole room, any media playing on the television and the child’s physiological measurements.

Fostering Collaboration and Education

Our researchers carry out NIH-funded, multidisciplinary translational research here in collaboration with the departments of pediatrics and physiology and biophysics as well as the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior in the School of Public Health and Health Professions.

These projects focus on social stress, family/relational stress and the mechanisms by which stress affects childhood depression and physical disease.

Both the facility and the data it gathers offer excellent teaching tools for residents and fellows. The Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry manages the study center but welcomes interest from any students or faculty who would find this resource useful.