Xiawei Ou
A researcher at Arkansas Children’s Research Institute and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has received a $3.1 million National Institutes of Health grant to study how maternal obesity during pregnancy influences infant brain development.
Xiawei Ou, Ph.D., will lead the five-year study, which he hopes will lay the foundation for discovering strategies to promote brain development in children born to obese mothers.
Ou is also an associate professor at UAMS and the director of the Brain Imaging Lab at Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center.
His research team believes maternal obesity during pregnancy exposes a baby to an inflammatory environment that changes brain structure and development, according to a news release. They’ll be looking specifically at which brain structures and functions are impacted, how long those effects last and the underlying processes that lead to these changes.
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