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Neuroscience: The most vulnerable brains

Nature volume 463, pages 154–156 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

An increase in premature births means that more babies are at risk of neurological damage. Erika Check Hayden talks with researchers who are developing ways to help these children.

Julia lies with her eyes closed in an incubator, twitching her tiny limbs in a quiet, sedated sleep. Like the other babies in this intensive-care unit, she is surrounded by a phalanx of machinery. But unlike her nursery mates, this baby isn't wrapped in a warm blanket. Her doctors at the Children's Hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have left most of her days-old body bare and placed her on a blue mat that is cooling her to a hypothermic 33.5 °C. Gauze wrapping holds a network of electrodes against her skull. The electrodes are sending a stream of signals to a nearby monitor, which is being watched carefully by David Rowitch.

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  1. Erika Check Hayden
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Watch a video on this topic at http://go.nature.com/VGGayN

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Hayden, E. Neuroscience: The most vulnerable brains. Nature 463, 154–156 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/463154a

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