Welcome to the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Unit
The goal of the research carried out by the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Unit (DCNU) is to understand the consequences of brain disease or injury sustained during childhood, examine brain/behaviour relationships, and provide diagnostic and prognostic markers of cognitive and behavioural outcome.
In recognition of the flourishing new discipline of Cognitive Neuroscience, the DCNU was established in 1996 at ICH as the first paediatric department of its kind in the UK. Since its inception, the Unit has rapidly grown to form an academic arm with expertise in investigating brain structure/function relationships in infants, children, and adolescents using behavioural and brain imaging techniques, and a clinical arm (the Clinical Neuropsychology Service at GOSH) providing a pan hospital diagnostic service for patients with focal brain damage or disease. This combined entity works to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cognitive and behavioural sequelae of brain damage or disease during development, and to identify the factors that impede or promote recovery and/or reorganization of function.
The DCNU has extensive collaborative links within ICH/GOSH and UCL, the UK, and overseas. Long standing collaborations with colleagues in the Radiology and Physics Unit, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in USA have led to the discovery of the syndrome of Developmental Amnesia, and to the identification of the neuropathology underlying inherited verbal and orofacial dyspraxia associated with the mutation/deletion of FOXP2, the first gene implicated in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language. Collaborations with colleagues in the Neurosciences Unit have led to the development of outcome measures for patients with intractable epilepsy undergoing elective surgery.
Currently, a team of specialist neuroscientists collaborates with clinical colleagues in a number of areas; broadly, the aim of the ongoing studies is to relate cognitive and behavioural dysfunction to the underlying brain pathology as revealed by electrophysiological and magnetic resonance imaging techniques. Highlighted below are projects led by the senior investigators in the DCNU.
Brain response to injury (Dr Torsten Baldeweg)
Torsten is studying mechanisms of cortical plasticity in response to early brain injury in children with different types of brain pathology. He is using state-of-the-art neuroimaging methods (structural and functional MRI, diffusion imaging) in close collaboration with colleagues in the Radiology and Physics and Neuroscience Units, and methods of cognitive neurophysiology, such as event-related potentials (ERP). Some of the newly developed methods are now being applied routinely to provide specialised diagnostic input to the GOSH Epilepsy Surgery Programme.
A second research area focuses on auditory cortical plasticity using ERP, cognitive and pharmacological modulations, neurocomputational methods, and experimental animal models. These studies are aimed at cohorts with genetic and neurocognitive abnormalities, as well as those at risk of neuropsychiatric disorders (autism, psychosis), in collaboration with the Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit.
Disorders of long term memory and visual-social cognition (Dr Michelle de Haan)
Michelle has a long standing interest in the functional development of long term memory in cohorts at risk of having suffered hypoxic-ischaemic events as young infants. Her research uses a variety of quantitative techniques such as ERP, structural MRI, and neuropsychological assessments to provide convergent information on how development of particular brain areas relates to normal emergence of memory abilities, and how brain memory circuits reorganize following brain damage at various ages. Another related area of interest is how particular brain areas come to be specialized for recognizing certain types of materials (e.g., faces), and how individual differences in these abilities develop.
Speech and language (Dr Frédérique Liégeois)
Frédérique has an interest in language and memory, and expertise in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain organization for language in children with neurological disorders. She is working on a research programme dedicated to the diagnosis and neurorehabilitation of speech and language dysfunction in children and adolescents with acute brain injury or disease. She is currently investigating the neural basis of speech and nonspeech orofacial movements in healthy individuals, as well as in children who have sustained traumatic brain injury. Other projects are aimed at investigating motor speech outcome in children who have undergone brain surgery (hemispherectomy and posterior fossa tumour removal).
Frédérique's work benefits from the partnership established between the DCNU and The Children's Trust at Tadworth linked to a neuroscience initiative to examine the consequences of traumatic brian injury and implement specific neurorehabilitation methods to enhance recovery of function.
Clinical research programme of the Neuropsychology Service
A major research component of the Neuropsychology Team’s activity is to provide neuropsychological markers of cognitive and behavioural dysfunction (e.g. memory, attention, language, executive function) for patients with epilepsy at the pre-operative stage, and in follow-up after temporal lobectomy, hemispherectomy, or frontal lobectomy. The Team is led by Dr Valerie Muter and Dr Peter Rankin with specialist input from Ms Sue Harrison, assisted by Ms Claire Nussey. Additional input for diagnostic evaluations of patients with other neurological disorders (e.g. cerebrovascular disorders; traumatic brain injury, Tourette’s syndrome, solid brain tumours) is provided by Dr Tara Murphy.
Clinical Neuropsychology Training
The Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Unit and Clinical Neuropsychology Team at GOSH offer a professional MSc programme in Clinical and Applied Paediatric Neuropsychology. The The 3rd UK Paediatric Neuropsychology Symposium will take place at ICH in April 2012. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropsych/InternationalSymposia for further information.
Post doctoral training programme
Collaborations with colleagues in Cardiology and Cardiac Intensive Care at ICH/GOSH, Neonatal Medicine at UCH/UCL, and at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, have provided an excellent setting for training of post doctoral fellows. Currently there are four post doctoral fellows, each with their own expertise, focused on examining the effects of hypoxia-ischaemia on memory function (Drs Monica Munoz - neuroanatomist, Janine Cooper – functional MRI of autobiographical memory), and memory and medial temporal lobe correlates of epilepsy and temporal lobectomy (Dr Francesca Cormack – ERP and MRI studies).
Page last modified on 13 jun 11 14:42
