Child Study Center Grand Rounds: "Modelling 'Normal' in the Developing Brain Using MRI"

There has been a huge increase in neuroimaging in infants and toddlers with an aim to investigate if the brain, prior to extensive ex utero environmental exposures, can help understand later individual differences in cognitive / behavioural outcome or whether they can predict the onset of later neurodevelopmental conditions. In a European Connectome project, the developing Human Connectome, there are >1000 neuroimaging datasets during fetal and neonatal life. Using study outputs from this study as a base, I will describe how brain imaging is performed in these practically difficult groups, the descriptions of brain development we have built from this imaging and overview the cognitive and clinical implications of early brain imaging in later life.