"Investigating the functional maturation and organization of infant brain"

Parvaneh ADIBPOUR - Post Doctoral fellow - Department of Early Life Imaging, King's College London

When: May 26Th 11 am

Where: Espace Pouillon

Abstract: Brain maturation is very intense during the first postnatal months, laying the foundation for the development of sensory, motor, and cognitive abilities in human infants. This presentation gathers insights from neuroimaging and eye tracking to highlight the pre-specialisation of the infant brain for processing socially-relevant information. I will present a few studies investigating early brain activity, recorded with Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), to characterize the functional aspects of infant brain organisation and maturation. Focusing on the early-developing sensory systems, I will discuss the emerging functional efficiency of the brain networks for processing visual and auditory information, and further attempt to relate this perspective to the emergence of early cognitive abilities (e.g. face processing) and functional lateralisation in the brain networks. Finally, I will introduce recent work on clinical perspectives, illustrating functional aspects of brain (dys-)maturation in very premature infants, focused on the study of early spontaneous brain activity.