When Western neuroscientist Ryan Stevenson got the news he had won a competitive two-year fellowship, his first thought was: “Do they have the right Ryan?”
He’s one of eight recipients of the 2024 Dorothy Killam Trust Fellowship, granted to “scholars of exceptional ability.”
“When you apply to these, you’re throwing your hat in the ring; there’s a one-in-a-million chance,” Stevenson said. “I was very surprised and very happy.”
He’ll have two years to focus solely on research.
Stevenson studies how children perceive the world around them – especially those who may experience it differently, including autistic kids and those with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or cochlear implants – and the way it impacts their future brain development.
“It’s the gift of time. It impacts the number of grad students you can take on, the number of projects you can do, the speed with which you can actually do the research,” Stevenson said of the fellowship.
The Dorothy Killam Trust Fellowships – formerly known as the Killam Research Fellowships – support those with “superior, ground-breaking, best-in-class research that stands to have significant impact on a national or global scale.”
It includes $80,000 for each of the two years, paid in this case to Western to allow Stevenson, a psychology professor, to pause his teaching duties.
Sensory research drives tailored supports
Stevenson leads the Sensory Perception Research Lab at Western, studying multisensory integration, or how people use information from multiple senses, as well as how those abilities develop over a lifetime and how they relate to cognitive function.
That work allows him to look at tailoring support services or techniques to help children with special needs in their day-to-day lives.
“If you can identify this early in development – kids with a particular sensory phenotype are more likely to have issues with X, Y, and Z – you can plan for that,” Stevenson said.
“Any supports you give early are better than trying to swoop in later in development.” – Ryan Stevenson, Western neuroscientist and psychology professor
Marrying specific supports with those sensory profiles can address cognitive development changes or impacts that may show up later in life.
Working with a large data set – featuring information from more than 3,000 children – from a collaboration of universities and associations across Ontario, the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Network (POND), Stevenson and his team have been able to show there are clusters of sensory issues.
Children that share certain characteristics are more likely to exhibit other sensory challenges.
“There are many different presentations of sensory issues, but they are not random,” he said.
Stevenson is studying those sensory groups, or clusters, including their brain anatomy and function from MRI scans. He hopes to discover new answers during his fellowship.
“I would love to have a much clearer picture of what is going on in the brain functionally, anatomically in terms of the sensory profiles. Figuring out what the biological bases are of these links between sensory processing and other cognitive development will give us a lot of insight into why these developmental changes are happening,” he said.
Knowledge translation key focus
The Dorothy Killam Trust Fellowship also includes an emphasis on knowledge mobilization, or translating research findings and their importance to a wider audience, such as the public.
For Stevenson, that is a crucial goal.
Sharing results with families, practitioners and teachers can help them craft better supports for the children in their care, he says. He hopes to use the “gift of time” to expand his lab’s knowledge mobilization efforts, previously spearheaded by a post-doctoral member, Fakhri Shafai. Their latest collaborative project involves a workshop to train graduate students on disseminating research to maximize real-world impact.
The POND Network is also a valued knowledge mobilization partner, hosting sessions to allow community feedback on early research findings before they are published.
Stevenson strives to include representation from the populations impacted by his research. On one project looking at the strengths and weaknesses of those with ADHD, all the researchers involved – including Stevenson – have ADHD.
It all started with research into basic sensory processing.
Then, during a post-doctoral position at Vanderbilt University, Stevenson’s research narrowed to more specific special population groups.
“It was bridging the gap between basic science and its real-world applications,” he said.
“Being able to work with families, and having that interaction, was a bit more rewarding to me.”
