King’s College London has been awarded a six year €15m ‘Synergy grant’ by the European Research Council (ERC) to map the development of nerve connections in the brain before and just after birth.

The Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP) will use world-leading MR imaging facilities in the Evelina Children’s Hospital Neonatal Unit at St Thomas’ Hospital to help understand how the brain develops, and to see how it is affected by genetic variation or problems like preterm birth. This will provide insights into conditions such as Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Professor David Edwards, Director of the Centre for the Developing Brain, who is leading the collaboration, said: ‘This is about understanding how the human brain assembles itself. By the time a baby is born, the brain is well developed and key connections between nerves have already been made, so we are looking at babies in the womb. We want to map the nerve connections that form as the brain grows and develops.’

The resulting map will be made freely available to the research community to help improve understand and develop treatments for neurological disorders.

The ground-breaking collaboration brings together world-leaders in medicine, engineering, computer science, and physics from King’s College London, Imperial College London, and the University of Oxford.

(Source: kcl.ac.uk)