Development of age appropriate functional imaging paradigm v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development of age appropriate non-invasive functional imaging paradigms to investigate language and memory function in paediatric age
IRAS ID
206601
Contact name
S Seri
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aston University
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Epilepsy surgery in children offers the prospect of reduced seizure frequency and improved overall quality of life. There is, however, a risk that brain regions that are important for thinking skills, such as memory and language, will be affected. We plan to examine new ways to improve prediction of problems in thinking skills after brain surgery in children.
Using non-invasive brain scans we plan to assess activity in the brains of children with epilepsy during a memory task, to try to establish whether functional imaging of memory in these children shows a different pattern of representation to healthy young children and adults. The study will focus on the need to develop methods that take into account the expected lower general cognitive skills of children, the impairments exhibited in those with epilepsy and normal function during development, which may differ from adults.
20 children with epilepsy will be studied prior to surgery and their data will be compared to that of healthy controls. Data on healthy controls is already available from a pilot study performed at Aston University. Clinical and neuropsychological assessments pre- and post-operatively will be used to examine any changes in memory function, and the ability of pre-operative imaging data to predict outcome will be modelled using regression analysis.
This initial study will help us to define the best brain activity measures to use and determine whether scanning prior to surgery can predict whether a child’s thinking skills are impaired post-operatively. This will enable us to apply for larger funding to conduct a multi-centre study. We hope to develop evidence-based imaging tools that can be used in children’s epilepsy services in the medium term.
REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/WM/0174
Date of REC Opinion
6 Jun 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion