Integrated view on disruptions of early brain development

Project Information

BRAINVIEW

Grant agreement ID: 642996

DOI

10.3030/642996

Project closed

EC signature date 10 December 2014

Start date 1 January 2015

End date 31 December 2019

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 3 888 945,36

EU contribution

€ 3 888 945,36

Coordinated by

STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BRAINVIEW (Integrated view on disruptions of early brain development)

Reporting period: 2017-01-01 to 2019-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Neurodevelopmental disorders are rather common (estimated prevalence 10%) and carry an enormous burden for patients, their families and society. The Innovative Training Networks (ETN) BRAINVIEW is an inter-disciplinary scientific network that investigates disruptions of early brain development. These disruptions are assumed to underlie neurodevelopmental disorders with onset early in life. Identifying brain abnormalities and associated cognitive and behavioral abnormalities will help to move towards early recognition, understanding of the pathophysiology, and develop early interventions.
The specific scientific and technological objectives of the BRAINVIEW are to:
1. Understand typical variation in the neural and cognitive underpinnings of the early social brain, and to better understand the role of genetic and environmental risk factors for neurodevelopmental disorders.
2. Investigate disruptions of early brain development that underlie early onset developmental disorders. Towards this goal, we aim to examine in high-risk foetuses and/ or infants structural development of the brain and maturation of excitatory-inhibitory system prenatally and postnatally by MRI/MRS, examine abnormalities of general movements prenatally, assess atypical neural connectivity from EEG and NIRS data, examine the role of excitatory-inhibitory balance from EEG data, evaluate the role of social information processing from EEG data, and investigate action understanding by means of neuroimaging and behavioural methods.
3. Investigate how the atypical development of social, attentional, cognitive and motor functions and abnormal parent-child interaction contribute to atypical trajectories towards neurodevelopment disorders. Towards this goal, we aim to examine behavioural trajectories of inattention, impulsivity and response variability, investigate synchrony patterns in parent-child interaction, and conduct analyses of automated recorded motion patterns.
4. Develop tools and applications. Towards this goal, we aim to develop and test a Baby FaceReader for automatic decoding of facial emotional expressions in infants, conduct an early intervention study in infants at high familial risk to develop ASD, and integrate findings from multiple imaging modalities and multiple functional domains to understand development of atypical trajectories.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first reporting period of BRAINVIEW was focused on implementing the training and management structure of the project as well as hiring the 15 ESRs. After a successful kick-off meeting in Amsterdam (March 14, 2015), followed by a well-organized and -executed recruitment process, we had all ESRs appointed and starting work during/after summer 2015.
For all scientific objectives, we have achieved important results, among which the following:
1. We have acquired resting-state MRI scans of newborns at high risk for ASD and of health controls. We found that regional homogeneity values were significantly higher in the high-risk sample in the somatosensory cortex bilaterally and in the right lateral visual cortex. These results may indicate an atypical level of synchronous activity in sensory regions in risk populations.
2. We have developed a new task that can be used for studying familial contributions to gaze processing in very young children. We piloted the eye-gaze monitoring online task with an independent sample of typically developing children, and found that the results were comparable with the standardized scores from the validated version for older children.
3. We have further developed and implemented Recurrence Quantification Analysis to identify patterns of timing characteristic for each partner of interaction as well as the relative timing of the participants in parent-infant pair. Additionally, we have been using Recurrence Quantification Analysis to investigate complex patterns of eye gaze fixations in infant eye tracking data.
4. We have developed – for the first time - a beta (and distributable) version of Baby FaceReader that is ready for data collection and implementation in other projects.
5. We integrated scores from Mullen Scales of Early Learning, Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales and Autism Observation Scale for Infants at approximately 8 and 14 months of age separately in a least-square support vector machine (LS-SVM) model trained to classify subjects basing on the clinical outcome at 36 months. Results show that best performing classifiers at each time point for classification of ASD and generally atypical development result from the different combinations of measures from different domains. We have further completed analyses on comparing HR and LR on temperamental data and predicting clinical outcome at 36 months from early temperamental data.
In addition to the scientific progress, we have also completed all planned training events, including the first training school in Uppsala on novel methods in infancy research and project management, the second training school was in Nijmegen on behavior observation methods and measures, and the third training school took place in London on advanced methods for infant neuroimaging and environmental risk factors.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

BRAINVIEW moves beyond the state-of-the-art in several ways: 1) improving our understanding of the typical variation in the neural and cognitive underpinnings of the early social brain in healthy populations, 2) developing and applying new methods for brain imaging and analyses of brain data, 3) introducing new behavioural and cognitive paradigms, 4) testing new interventions, and 5) developing tools and applications, such as a baby face-reader. BRAINVIEW’s impact will be further realized through dissemination, public engagement and outreach. Our ESRs will be trained to 1) disseminate new knowledge to the scientific and clinical community; 2) educate professionals and the public about early onset neurodevelopmental disorders, combating stigmatization; 3) raise public awareness about early environmental risk and genetic risk factors for neurodevelopmental disorders, and promote a healthy life style, and 4) instigate an open dialogue with policy makers on programmes for prevention and early identification of neurodevelopmental disorders across Europe. BRAINVIEW’s dissemination and outreach activities are linked with and bolstered by those of associated projects in autism research such as EU-AIMS (www.eu-aims.eu) and Eurosibs (www.eurosibs.eu) and have lead to successful symposia and lectures at several international conferences (IMFAR 2016, IMFAR 2017, ECNP 2016, Autism Europe 2016). The BRAINVIEW website has been set up (www.brainview.org/); it shows details on mission goals, project structures, and participants.

Brainview