Developmental insult and intervention
To enhance the understanding of how an injury to a child’s brain can impact cognitive, behavioural, and social development.
Types of brain injuries include traumatic brain injury and stroke. Additionally, we are focused on tailoring and administering interventions to help young children with brain injuries and insults.
Our goals are to:
- characterise the longitudinal consequences of acquired brain injuries sustained in childhood by studying the functional outcomes
- identify risk, resilience and protective factors, to inform intervention strategies
- develop and tailor interventions to help families and children with cognitive, behavioural and social problems related to their acquired brain injuries.
Psychological assessment
The Brain and Mind group offers psychological and neuropsychological testing (data collection) services to research groups within the Murdoch Children’s and commercially funded clinical trials. We have a team of psychologists who are trained and experienced in the standardised administration, scoring and interpretation of psychological assessments. The Psychological Assessment team also offer additional research services to investigators including consultation regarding research protocol development.
Please contact us to discuss your psychological assessment needs and the fees associated prior to applying for funding.
Email:
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Team Leaders
Group Members
Our projects
Traumatic brain injury across the lifespan
In Australia, the lifetime cost per individual, for an injury sustained in adulthood, is reported to be $5 million for a severe injury and $3.7 million for a moderate injury. While no such estimates are available for individuals sustaining an injury in childhood, it can only be assumed that lifetime costs (over 60 years if injured as a pre-schooler), can only be greater. No cure currently exists for damage sustained following a traumatic brain injury (TBI), leaving patients and their families to manage chronic, often lifelong, challenges in areas such as behaviour, cognition and psychosocial functioning.
By pooling and harmonising data sets from our team at MCRI, as well as data from key Australia and New Zealand TBI researchers, each of whom has data sets pertaining to individuals sustaining a TBI during childhood (pre-school, school-age), adolescence, and adulthood (early, middle and late), the study will enable us to identify trajectories of recovery across the lifespan as well as risk, resilience and protective factors, to inform intervention strategies.
Recovery after stroke in young children
In collaboration with the Royal Children’s Hospital Child Stroke Program, our team are studying the impact of stroke on the developing brain. In the first study to systematically track recovery across multiple health domains, we followed a group of children for 5 years after a stroke. We found that recovery depends on the child’s age and that impairments may not emerge until long after the stroke, particularly in young children.
Our results suggest that children require an individualised approach to care and rehabilitation and need to be monitored long-term. We have also found that the family environment, particularly parents' mental health, is an important predictor of outcomes. Our team are motivated by improving outcomes for children affected by stroke and their families.
In 2019, we developed Australia’s first clinical guideline for the Subacute Rehabilitation of Childhood Stroke to provide health professionals with recommendations for care. Our current research is focused on discovering ways to identify children most at risk of developing problems and developing effective treatments.
Funding
Thanks to our key partners, funders, and supporters.
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Stroke Foundation
- Vanguard Foundation
- Myer Foundation
Featured publications
- Crowe L, Collie A, Hearps S, Dooley J, McCrory P, Davis G, Anderson V. (2018). Cognitive and physical symptoms of concussive injury in children: a detailed longitudinal recovery study. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(5), 311-6.
- Greenham, M., Gordon, A., Cooper, A., Hearps, S., Ditchfield, M., Coleman, L., Hunt, R.W., Mackay, M.T., Monagle, P., Anderson, V. (2021). Fatigue following pediatric arterial ischemic stroke: Prevalence and associated factors. Stroke, 52 (10), 3286–3295.
- Anderson, V., Darling, S., Mackay, M., Monagle, P., Greenham, M., Cooper, A., Hunt, R., Hearps, S., Gordon, A. (2020). . European Journal of Pediatric Neurology, 25, 52-58.Cognitive resilience following paediatric arterial ischemic stroke: biological and environmental predictors
- Ryan, N.P., Genc, S., Beauchamp, M.H., Yeates, K., Hearps, S., Catroppa, C., Anderson, V., Silk, T. (2018). White matter microstructure predicts longitudinal social cognitive outcomes after paediatric traumatic brain injury: a diffusion tensor imaging study. Psychological Medicine, 48, 679-691.
- Crowe, L., Catroppa, C., Babl, F., Godfrey, C., Anderson, V. (2021). Long-term intellectual function after traumatic brain injury in very young children. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 36(2), 126-133.
- Tuli-Sood, N., Godfrey. C., Chavez-Arana, C., Anderson, V., Catroppa, C. (2022). Paediatric traumatic brain injury and the dysregulation profile: The mediating role of decision-making. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. doi.org/10.1080/09602011.2022.2025861
- Yumul J, Catroppa C, Anderson V, McKinlay A, Crowe L. (2021). Post-concussive signs and symptoms in preschool children: A systematic review. Neuropsychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-021-09518-z.
- Crowe, L., Brown, A., Peters, H. (2021). Cognitive and behavioural profiles of children with Aspartylglucosaminuria: a case series. Journal of Pediatric Neurology. doi:10.1055/s-0041-1730964.
- Ryan, N.P., Catroppa, C., Hughes, N., Painter, F., Hearps, S., Beauchamp, M.H., Anderson, V. (2021). Executive function mediates the prospective association between neurostructural differences within the central executive network and anti-social behavior after childhood traumatic brain injury. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 62(9), 1150-1161.
- Greenham, M., Knight, S., Rodda, J., Scheinberg, A., Anderson, V., Fahey, M., Mackay, M. (2021). Australian clinical consensus guideline for the subacute rehabilitation of childhood stroke. International Journal of Stroke, 16(3), 311-320.
- Catroppa C, Crossley L, Hearps S, et al. (2017). Social and behavioural outcomes following childhood traumatic brain injury: What predicts outcome at 12 months post-insult? Journal of Neurotrauma, 34, 1439-47.
- Catroppa C, Stone K, Hearps S, et al. (2015). Evaluation of an attention and memory intervention post-childhood acquired brain injury: Preliminary efficacy, immediate and 6 months post-intervention. Brain Injury, 29(11), 1317–24.
- Catroppa, C., Botchway, E., Ryan, N.P., Anderson, V., Morrison, E., Sood, N. (2021). Evaluating the feasibility and efficacy of the Amsterdam Memory and Attention Training for Children (Amat-c) following acquired brain injury (ABI). Brain Impairment. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/BrImp.2021.13.
- Crowe, L., Darling S., Chow, J. (2021). Assessing social cognition in children. In S. McDonald (Ed.), Clinical Disorders of Social Cognition (pp. 108-144). Routledge.
- Ryan, N.P, Greenham, M., Gordon, A., Ditchfield, M., Coleman, L., Cooper, A., Crowe, L., Hunt, R., Monagle, P., Mackay, M., Anderson, V. (2021). Social Cognitive Dysfunction Following Pediatric Arterial Ischemic Stroke: Evidence from a Prospective Cohort Study. Stroke, 52, 1609-1617.
- Ryan, N.P., Anderson, V.A, Bigler, E.D., Dennis, M., Taylor, H.G., Rubin, K.H., Vannatta, K., Gerhardt, C.A., Stancin, T., Beauchamp, M.H., Hearps, S., Catroppa, C., Yeates, K.O. (2021). Delineating the Nature and Correlates of Social Dysfunction after Childhood Traumatic Brain Injury Using Common Data Elements: Evidence from an International Multi-Cohort Study. Journal of Neurotrauma, 38 (2), 252-260.
- Botchway, E. N., Godfrey, C., Anderson, V., & Catroppa, C. (2019). A systematic review of sleep-wake disturbances in childhood traumatic brain injury: Relationship with fatigue, depression, and quality of life. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 34(4), 241-256.