Being born is one of the most dramatic of human experiences. The fetus moves from the protection and relative monotony of the mother’s womb into a world of sound, colour, touch, smell, and taste. Faces and voices are among the most prominent new experiences and this first taste of our social world triggers rapid changes in brain function over the first days, weeks and months of early life.
The aim of the PIPKIN project is to track infant development, particularly the development of brain mechanisms related to social interaction, from the third trimester of pregnancy to the first few months of the infants’ life, investigating how the infant’s brain is shaped by social interactions and the environment around the child. We will use ultrasound to study the infant in the womb, and neuroimaging techniques such as Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and Electroencephalography (EEG) to track brain development over the first 6 months of life.
Research consistently shows an attainment gap between infants born into advantaged families, and those born into families where financial resources and educational opportunities are more limited. The project aims to study infants from a range of backgrounds in the hope that, in the longer term, we can use what we learn from this project to design family friendly interventions to ensure that infants from every walk of life have the best possible opportunity to develop to their full potential.
Please visit the PIPKIN Study website for more information.
Principal Investigators
Professor Mark Johnson: The focus of my research is the study of functional brain development over the first years of life. The key questions that motivate my research concern how specialized cognitive functions emerge with particular brain regions (e.g. the cerebral cortex) during development. I am particularly interested in the development of the newborn social brain, specifically activity during face perception, eye-gaze perception and eye-gaze cued action, and the perception of human action. Through imaging (ERP, NIRS) and behavioural testing methods, my goal is to understand the typical and atypical development of the human social brain network.
Dr. Sarah Lloyd-Fox: I am interested in studying how infants' cognitive abilities develop over the first year of life. I primarily use a neuroimaging technique known as functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and have pioneered its use with infants over the last ten years. Specifically my work focuses on the investigation of cortical responses to social cues and the application of fNIRS to the study of compromised development. The latter includes the study of infants at risk for autism, and recent work taking fNIRS to rural Africa to study undernutrition. I am also pursuing technical advances in the use of fNIRS with infants to improve the precision and reliability of cortical measurements.
