Connecting the growing brain is a network of specialised clinicians and researchers that aims to understand the developing brain through synaptic communication.
The study of the brain and brain diseases is one of the most complex in human biology. In children, continuous growth and change only add to this inherent complexity.
Though the high prevalence (up to 20%) of Neurological and psychiatric conditions among the paediatric population, there is a dissociation between the wealth of information, sophisticated resources and clinical practice that hinder the study of children’s brain. Among the causes figure scarce reports in the literature as compared to those of adults; the “classical” clinical approach which primarily focuses on symptoms rather than on understanding mechanisms and aiming for prevention and cure; and the very few neuropaediatricians trained in basic neuroscience.
Inspired by the innovative field of inborn errors of metabolism, the main motivation of our project is to link basic neuroscience, neurometabolism, and clinical approaches in paediatric neurology and paidopsychiatry, through the study of synaptic communication in children.
Purely focused on children and adolescents, such an ambitious project is based on a multi-level integrative network illustrating the philosophy of “systems biology” and moving from a reductionist to a more holistic approach to understand the brain in childhood. This represents a “paradigm shift” and the opportunity to develop new diagnostic tools, biomarkers and novel therapies.
Our network provides some interesting original and multifaceted approaches that can bring neurology and psychiatry back to its biological basis. Through this website, it aims also to bring education in and understanding of neuroscience to the general public and the scientific community.
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