We can’t wait for #Flux2023! To help us prepare for the conference, we are fortunate that many of our amazing speakers provided us with some details about upcoming presentations. One symposium, led by Áine Dineen, is below. We have many other posts on the way, so please keep an eye out on our blog for more symposia previews! Share your excitement for these symposia using #Flux2023 on social media!
Thursday, September 7th, 1:45pm – 3:00pm
Organizer:
Áine Dineen, Trinity College Dublin
Chair:
Rhodri Cusack, Trinity College Dublin
Speakers:
Brittany Howell, Virginia Tech
Acquiring connectome data longitudinally in non-sedated sleeping infants and toddlers
Áine Dineen, Trinity College Dublin
100 Babies: Insights from awake fMRI at 2-months
Cameron Ellis, Stanford University
How to read a baby’s mind: A protocol for fMRI with awake, behaving infants
Melanie Ganz-Benjaminsen, University of Copenhagen
Clinical MRI without anaesthesia in children aged 4-10
Written by Áine Dineen and Calum Kyle
Advancements in neuroimaging have presented MRI as a highly viable avenue for exploring the developing brain. Scanning infants and young children, however, is not without its challenges. Our symposium will therefore focus upon the practicalities of MRI as a novel approach to understanding cognition in infants and young children. In order to present perspectives from across the cutting edge of developmental MRI, our symposium, chaired by Rhodri Cusack (Trinity College Dublin), involves speakers from institutions across Europe and the United States, who use MRI at differing stages of development, across both clinical and research settings. Brittany Howell (Virginia Tech) utilises MRI to uncover the structural and functional connectomes of infants from as young as 2-weeks-old to as old as 30-months. She will share the multitude of practical insights she has acquired during the course of her work on the Baby Connectome Project. Áine Dineen (Trinity College Dublin) will speak on the work of the Foundations of Cognition Project, describing the logistics of acquiring fMRI from the largest cohort of awake 2-month-old infants to date. Cameron Ellis (Stanford) will discuss the methods used by his lab to collect rich functional and anatomical data from awake children across the diverse age range of 3 months to 3 years. Finally, Melanie Ganz-Benjaminsen (Copenhagen University and Righospitalet) will discuss the use of MRI as a diagnostic tool, critically evaluating the commonplace use of general anaesthesia for children undergoing diagnostic MRI, and presenting a novel approach that tackles the highly debated use of sedation. These talks converge on our goal of advancing the understanding of developing cognition, improving future developmental imaging studies, paving the way towards new clinical tools for earlier detection of atypical development of brain function, and encouraging others to join these efforts.