Brain development in children born too soon

Preterm birth occurs in 6-12% of pregnancies.

Intensive care of preterm infants has made advance over the last decades resulting in dramatically increased survival rates for extremely preterm born infants.

These children are at higher risk for cognitive and motor problems, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and CP than their peers. Our research is directed at understanding the underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders in children born preterm.

In the present reaserch programme, we have shown that neonatal neuroimaging in combination with infant motor development assessment is highly predictive of CP at 2-years.

This finding enabled us to tailor a follow up program and early intervention for high risk infants, now implemented in the clinic.

Further we aim to study the relation between adverse neonatal brain and early motor development and autism spectrum, ADHD, intellectual dysfunction and developmental disorders.

Our aim is to perform neuroimaging, neurodevelopmental assessments, genetic and registry-based studies to identify risk profiles in preterm born children suitable for early interventions.

We will contribute to the general knowledge of brain processing functions during infancy and childhood, increase awareness of risk and protective factors for brain development and investigate the benefits of integrating early identification at risk into clinical practice.