An exciting new Action Medical Research project is to research the amazing flexibility of children's brains.
Dr Torsten Baldeweg of The Institute of Child Health at University College, London is particularly interested in the way that a child can compensate for brain damage by switching functions to different parts of the brain.
The team will be scanning the brains of a group of children between the ages of ten and sixteen who were born prematurely
He is hoping that his work will mean better identification of problems, which will allow support and treatment to be given to the child sooner, thereby reducing the number of children suffering from difficulties in later life.
Dr Baldeweg is particularly keen to address the brain damage that some babies suffer as a result of premature birth - since 10,000 babies are born at less than 32 weeks of gestation every year and of these ten to fifteen percent will develop major neurological impairments.
A further 20 to 30 percent will have difficulties with behaviour or learning, including reading or understanding speech or grammar.
brain scan
The team will be scanning the brains of a group of children between the ages of ten and sixteen who were born prematurely and have some brain injury. The first scan will use radio frequency waves inside a magnetic field to map the structure of the brain, and a second scan will measure the blood flow and blood movement within the brain.
These are called 'functional scans', because the children are asked to carry out activities - listening to, or forming speech - whilst the scan is in progress to highlight the areas of the brain used during the exercise of that function.
Dr Baldeweg is fascinated by the immense plasticity and resilience of a child's brain, and its ability to compensate for damage by switching functions to different parts of the brain, or from the left to the right hand side.
He believes that by the age of ten, these changes will be apparent. The scans will identify where and what the damage was, and how the brain is exercising the recovered function.
This exciting new project at The Institute of Child Health at University College London and University College Medical School combines the skills of both neurologists and speech therapists and could dramatically affect the lives of many children born too early.
"It's still a mystery why some children recover functions, while others struggle.
"We are looking to find out whether this is something systematic, or whether there are other factors at work that need further research.
"We hope that in a few years we will have accurate diagnostic tools such that we can identify through scans the newly born infant who have suffered this kind of damage, and offering counselling and speech therapy, for example, much earlier than we do at present."
Dr Baldeweg
Meet Edmund and Aubrey Born on 2nd December 2004. They were 25 weeks and 4 days old, and weighed in at just 890 and 800 grammes which is around 2lbs.
Martin, the twins father has kindly agreed to write an online diary to help illustrate the ups and downs of parenting two very premature babies.
