NeuRA and the University of Wollongong have received Australian Research Council (ARC) funding to support development of the child brain atlas.
The university’s Associate Professor Mark Schira, along with NeuRA Professor George Paxinos AO and Dr Steve Kassem received a $670,000 grant under the Discovery Projects scheme for 2026.
“While we have developed strong resources and understanding of adult human brains, we haven’t yet got that same understanding and imaging of children’s brains,” Dr Kassem said.
“This grant will support our work to develop high-resolution imaging datasets that show brain development throughout childhood and construct the most comprehensive atlas of the developing brain. We will use MRI with 0.5mm resolution, some of the highest resolution in the world from a child, and build a dataset of children aged 5 to 17 years of age.
“This will provide us with unprecedented detail of children’s brains and allow us to develop detailed atlases of key brain regions.”
The project will provide open-access dataset that will support further research into the hippocampus, thalamus, and sex-specific developmental differences, establishing a foundation for child brain studies.
