The Developing Brain

The second half of pregnancy is a time of explosive brain growth, and this team is watching it happen in real time inside the womb using advanced MRI and ultrasound. The problem is that we know very little about how the human brain actually builds itself during this critical window. Most of what we understand comes from animal studies or from scanning babies after they are born. That misses the key developmental events that happen before birth—and it cannot explain what goes wrong in conditions like premature birth or oxygen deprivation during delivery. If this research succeeds, it will produce new imaging tools and analysis methods that let doctors see brain damage as it happens, not hours or days later. That could lead to real-time clinical decisions during birth and to novel rescue treatments—drugs or cooling therapies—that protect a newborn’s brain when oxygen is cut off. The imaging techniques themselves may also prove useful for studying other organs or for diagnosing brain problems in older children and adults. This is primarily fundamental science. The team is asking how a living, growing brain organises its structure and function. But that basic knowledge is the foundation for every clinical tool and therapy they aim to develop.