In our Resilience in Education and Development (RED) project, we want to establish which factors help children flourish despite socio-economic disadvantage. We visit schools with our own iPad app, which assesses children’s cognition through multiple games, and incorporates multiple age-appropriate questionnaire. This app provides us with a detailed assessment of different cognitive skills, literacy, numeracy, mental health, home life, school life, and a whole series of demographic details. A subset of the cohort also visit the Unit for brain scans. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), using a series of tasks, we are able to explore both structural and dynamic brain mechanisms. The study is longitudinal, by revisiting the schools and reinviting children to the Unit, we track changes over time. Ultimately, we hope to learn more about the development of cognition and brain organisation, and how specific circumstances like socioeconomic status help shape child development.

 

Link: https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/red/