Edinburgh Neuroscience Annual Public Christmas Lecture

About the lecture

In this year’s Christmas Lecture, Professor James Boardman and Ms Lauren Ingledow will explore the impact of early life events on the rest of a person’s life. Drawing on both ongoing research and lived experience, they will discuss the kinds of problems that people who were born prematurely can develop, including difficulties with learning and behaviour, and how understanding the causes of these problems might help us develop new treatments to help children who were born too soon or too small get the best start in life.

James is Professor of Neonatal Medicine at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences as well as a Consultant at the Royal Infirmary’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He leads the Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort and a new programme called PRENCOG (PReterm Neurodevelopment and COGnition), which place families at the heart of a research journey that aims to improve the lives of children born preterm by discovering how and why early birth affects the developing brain.

Lauren was born in 1988, at 26 weeks gestation and weighing 430g, due to pre-eclampsia. Lauren achieved a BSc (Hons) in Applied Animal Studies and is a qualified Canine Hydrotherapist. Lauren is Co-founder / Director of the Adult Preemie Advocacy Network CIC (APAN).

APAN was set up in 2021 by a group of adults who were born prematurely, to share experiences and discuss all issues relating to the long-term impact of premature birth. In 2023 APAN became a Community Interest Company.

The Networks aims include providing a global network of peer support and advocacy through our website and social media channels. This is achieved by combining scientific evidence with lived experiences to promote awareness and understanding of the life-long physical and psychological impact of premature birth.

The lecture will last approximately 50 minutes, after which we will invite the audience to ask any questions about the research and experiences that were discussed.

On the day

Doors will open at 5pm. Please ensure you are seated by 5.20pm, as we may allow non-registed walk-ins after that time, if there are still seats available.

Following the lecture and questions, there will be a drinks reception in the foyer area, where mulled wine, tea and coffee will be served.

About the artwork on our poster

The image you can see at the top of this page is called "Visualising anonymised data to understand prematurity."

The Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort (TEBC) is a study that follows 400 young people from infancy to adulthood. This research aims to reach a broader understanding of the developmental outcomes as a result of being born too early or too small and to develop therapeutics and strategies to help children and young people who have problems access the help and support they need. Since its inception, the TEBC has adopted a comprehensive outreach strategy. Through a range of participant engagement activities, we aim to foster an environment where participants feel part of a community with each other. To celebrate the completion of participant recruitment, we created a commemorative art piece combining data and design. We generated a series of images, each representing a fetus at a specific gestational age, created entirely of numeric data points - such as birth weight - from babies born at that gestational age in TEBC. These visuals convey three key aspects of our research. First, they map fetal development and the breadth of prematurity among participants. Second, they highlight how many individual contributions help to form the big picture. Third, they reflect the power of anonymised data to facilitate research. Only with multiple anonymous contributions can one understand the big picture of prematurity and capture the breadth of developmental trajectories after being born too early or too small.

Credits: Dr Lorena Jiménez Sánchez (author), Craig Nicol (graphic design), Jill Hall (study coordinator), Prof James Boardman (study principal investigator).

Host or Publisher Deanery of Biomedical Sciences