February 11, 2019 – That Carol L. Cheatham, PhD was a scientist was clear to her family early on. At the age of 8 growing up on a farm in rural Wyoming, Cheatham conducted observational studies following the many farm cats around to find out (and diligently record in her notebook) where they would give birth. Once that got boring, she started trying to predict where the litters would be born based on her observations from the previous years.
January 25, 2019 – Pregnant women are often consumed by dietary choices such as finding a great prenatal vitamin, eating foods that will promote fetal growth, and doing everything they can to protect their pregnancy. After delivery, however, the mother’s preoccupation with her diet often pauses for four to six months. The Cheatham Nutrition & Cognition Lab is turning this type of thinking on its head with the belief that what women eat while breastfeeding greatly impacts their breastmilk and ultimately, their children’s development.
November 13, 2018 – From his lab in a textile mill-turned-food research center, a UNC scientist has brought an important nutrient to the world’s attention. Dr. Steven Zeisel wants to make sure you’re getting enough choline. In a state-of-the-art laboratory on the North Carolina Research Campus, in the unlikeliest of places in a former textile mill town, Zeisel is overseeing scientific experiments about a nutrient that could change the way we eat.
October 3, 2018 – Choline is present in human milk, and is especially important for fetal and infant development [2,3]. “The hint that choline is important for infant development comes from the fact that in human milk, the supply of choline remains constant across the first year of life,” says Professor Carol Cheatham from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Other important nutrients, such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are present in large quantities initially, but often level off after a few months.
August 30, 2018 – The Cheatham Nutrition & Cognition Lab at the NRI is undertaking a new pilot study with 12- and 24-month-old children called the Memory Game Pilot Study. In this study the lab seeks to validate the props used in the elicited imitation paradigm, a nonverbal means of assessing recall memory in preverbal children. The props, which have been designed and produced in the Cheatham lab, will be implemented with a group of young children of the same ages in an already-planned, collaborative study with Emory University.