To help us mark World Cerebral Palsy Day on 5 October, Action Medical Research funded researcher Dr Veronique Miron explains how she’s working to harness the power of the natural healing process to help brain repair, and so improve children’s quality of life.
What inspired you to investigate this particular area?
I’ve always been interested in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), how it reacts to injury, and the natural healing processes that help repair it. My research has long been focused on how the insulation around nerves, called white matter, can be regenerated after injury in adults to restore nerve health. Through discussions with researchers and clinicians at my university, I became aware that some neonates with brain injury don’t repair their white matter, which can lead to the development of cerebral palsy. Because cerebral palsy can cause major disability and affects 17 million people worldwide, I was keen to apply what I had discovered about repair in adults to encourage this repair in infants following brain injury.
Read more on the Action Medical Research website here >> https://www.action.org.uk/blog/2016/10/03/meet-researcher-dr-veronique-miron