UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The first two years of life is the most dynamic and perhaps the most critical phase of postnatal brain development. Concurrent with the rapid pace of structural brain growth is an equally rapid development of a wide range of cognitive and motor functions. In spite of its importance for understanding normal development and the early origins of neurodevelopment disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, our knowledge of human brain development in this crucial time period is minimal. While there has been growing interest in the study of normal brain development with MRI, most studies to date have not included the first few years of life because image acquisition and image analysis of children at this age is very challenging. We have addressed these challenges and have developed a rare prospective cohort of children who have already had neonatal MRIs.* In addition, we have developed novel and cutting edge, state-of-the-art image analysis techniques that provide powerful tools to study brain development in the first two years of life.

http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?projectnumber=5R01HD053000-04