What we do
About our project
Child Brain Center
Brain development affects all aspects of life. Abnormal brain function in children has great consequences for cognition, behavior and social interactions. To facilitate optimal brain development in children with brain disorders, professionals of the Erasmus MC Sophia Children's Hospital merge their specific expertises to form the Child Brain Center. We will combine clinical care and research to generate developmental growth curves in relevant domains, to study new treatments, to develop innovative and meaningful outcome measures and to rapidly translate findings to these children.Child Brain Lab
Within the framework of Child Brain Center we are creating a Child Brain Lab. In the Child Brain Lab we will longitudinally measure multiple metrics of brain structure and function of children with neurologic or psychiatric disorders or disorders of head and senses. Data will be systematically collected in a child-friendly manner – starting early in life. Thus, we make most use of the inherent plasticity of the developing brain, so that interventions will have the most impact. Results will be embedded in a precision-medicine framework for use in daily clinical care, with the overall aim to gather evidence on the effects of interventions. Interventions will be aimed at assessing disease mechanisms and improving functional deficits and behavior. Including children with a range of brain disorders builds a cohort that allows cross-fertilization of knowledge and treatment between different disorders.Our research focus
Our aims
We aim at realizing three important targets in the Child Brain Lab:
- Creating developmental curves for relevant and meaningful outcomes in children with brain disorders to enable early detection of an abnormal course and prediction of personalized trajectories. These curves will aid the design of intervention-trials.
- Developing innovative outcome measures to determine early effects of interventions, with a focus on children with developmental delay.
- Testing interventions that influence the course of disease at different levels: i. treatment of the underlying disease cause; ii. treatment of early manifestations of disease; iii. treatment of functional deficits; iv. intervention on behavior and coping of children and their parents.
Collaborations
Collaborations within Erasmus MC
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychology.
- Department of Neurology.
- Departments of Neurosurgery.
- Ear, Nose and Throat and Ophtalmology.
- Dutch Craniofacial Center.
- Department of Neuroscience.
- Genetics and Pediatrics.
- Department of Rehabilitation Medicine.
- Research Suite.
- Waardegedreven zorg.
- Generation R.
- ENCORE.
- Our patients, their parents.
Involved ACE’s: Development and Psychopathology, Population Neuroscience, BrainMotion.
Collaborations outside of Erasmus MC
- We collaborate with Design for Children (TU Delft), Rijndam Rehabilitation, and advocacy groups.
Our team
- Neeltje van Haren.
- Robert Pangalila.
- Marij Roebroeck.
- Tonya White.
- Marie-Claire de Wit.
contact - Marie Lise van Veelen.
contact - Henriette Moll.
- Ype Elgersma.
