Michelle Trudeau
Michelle Trudeau began her radio career in 1981, filing stories for NPR from Beijing and Shanghai, China, where she and her husband lived for two years. She began working as a science reporter and producer for NPR's Science Desk since 1982. Trudeau's news reports and feature stories, which cover the areas of human behavior, child development, the brain sciences, and mental health, air on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
Trudeau has been the recipient of more than twenty media broadcasting awards for her radio reporting, from such professional organizations as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Casey Journalism Center, the American Psychiatric Association, World Hunger, the Los Angeles Press Club, the American Psychological Association, and the National Mental Health Association.
Trudeau is a graduate of Stanford University. While at Stanford, she studied primate behavior and conducted field research with Dr. Jane Goodall at the Gombe Stream Research Centre in Tanzania. Prior to coming to NPR, Trudeau worked as a Research Associate at the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, D.C.
Trudeau now lives in Southern California, the mother of twins.
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People with extraordinary autobiographical memories also tend to have obsessive tendencies, researchers are learning. Brain scans reveal structural differences in the brains of these people, including a larger-than-normal caudate, a brain area linked to OCD. -
Neurobiologist James McGaugh, one of the world's experts on human memory, says that a woman he calls AJ has a one-of-a-kind memory. In an interview with NPR, she talks about what life is like for someone who can remember things she’s done and news events from almost every day of her life for the past 25 years. Her life is like a split-screen movie, with the past running almost as vividly as the present.
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Neurobiologist James McGaugh is one of the world's leading experts on how human memory works. In the current issue of the journal Neurocase, McGaugh reports on a woman with the astonishing ability to clearly remember events that happened to her decades ago.
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Magnetic resonance imaging reveals that the parts of the brain used to perceive an object overlap with those used to imagine that object. The test is the first to reveal the biological basis for the persistence of memories that never really happened. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports. -
A new study finds an intriguing reason why boys born prematurely are at a greater risk for developmental and cognitive problems than girls. Premature boys, by age 8, have less white matter -- the material that allows different parts of the brain to communicate with each other. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports.
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For some people, throwing away garbage causes intense unease and anxiety. They're called compulsive hoarders, and a new study finds that their brains work differently from non-hoarders. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports.
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The brain's center of reasoning and problem-solving is among the last to mature, according to a new study. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging and time-lapse technology to study brain development, compressing 15 years of human brain maturation into seconds. Scientists say the sequence of maturation also roughly parallels the evolution of the mammalian brain. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports.
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A new study finds that the tendency for some children in their early adolescence to sleep less presents a danger to their mental health. The study, in the recent issue of the journal Child Development, says children who get less sleep may develop symptoms of depression and low self-esteem. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports.
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A growing number of psychiatric researchers agrees that bipolar disorder occurs in children and not just in adults. Bipolar disorder is also known as manic-depression. Children as young as five or six years old suffer from the manic highs and deep depressions that characterize the disorder. In a second report on mental illness in children, NPR's Michelle Trudeau introduces one family whose young son has bipolar disorder.
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A study on the sex lives of adolescents ages 12 to 14 finds that one in five have had sexual intercourse. A survey of more than 30,000 young teens also raises fears about lack of contraception and increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. In the first installment of a three-part series, hear NPR's Michelle Trudeau.
