EDEN Study
Progress Report
08 March 2018
The EDEN study has enrolled 30 babies and toddlers to understand how infants with NF1 develop.
EDEN Study Progress Report
(Birkbeck Babylab)
Thanks to the support of our funders and collaboration between Universities of Manchester & Birkbeck, the EDEN study has enrolled 30 (and counting!) babies and toddlers. Families can join the study when their baby is roughly 5, 10 or 14 months of age. They come to the Birkbeck Babylab in leafy green Bloomsbury for 4 visits (at 5, 10, 14 and 24 months) and also go to Manchester for two visits (at 24 and 36 months), so the researchers really get to know the babies and the families. It has been an incredible opportunity to work with the babies and watch as they grow up!
The visits to the labs include tasks such as eye-tracking (using a small camera to measure what the baby is looking at on the screen) and EEG (a technique that measures naturally occurring brain responses to stimuli in the environment – babies wear a special hat and often look like baby astronauts!). We also conduct fun play-based tasks which look at their overall development. The babies get plenty of breaks and many fun games to keep them interested.
This data is collected as part of a bigger project, which measures early development in infants at high risk of autism or ADHD. We hope that findings from this study will further help us understand how infants with NF1 develop, as well as identify early markers of ASD/ADHD.
We are looking for more babies to join the study! Please do get in touch by emailing eden@manchester.ac.uk if you have a child with NF1 and would like to know more.
