23 Feb 21. Pediatric fMRI research funding

Congratulations to Edinburgh researchers who successfully obtained funding to conduct pediatric fMRI research.

Wellcome Trust & The University of Edinburgh Institutional Strategic Support Fund granted University of Edinburgh researchers funding to establish a new research capacity for conducting pediatric fMRI research.

The team will develop & pilot an fMRI protocol for five-year-old children & then use this protocol to study brain development in the Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort (TEBC) - a large, prospective longitudinal study on children born preterm.

We asked Hilary Richardson, Lecturer in Developmental Psychology & Principle Investigator her thoughts on receiving the award.

“Pediatric fMRI research is particularly challenging because it requires acclimating children to the MRI environment & training them to stay very still. It also requires specialized methods for collecting & analyzing the data.

Creating the infrastructure for pediatric fMRI research will not only enable curating a unique fMRI dataset of young children born preterm, via the TEBC research study, but it will also lay the groundwork for future pediatric fMRI studies at the University of Edinburgh.”