Visuele beperking bij kinderen met unilaterale cerebrale parese: Van een functioneel naar een neurologisch perspectief

The project is part of the PARENT project, an EU-funded project aiming for early diagnosis of motor and cognitive impairments in premature newborns. Moreover, it is linked to a larger ongoing project on neurological determinants of bimanual motor control in children with unilateral cerebral palsy (uCP), running jointly with the Faculty of Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences. It. More in detail, it will be focused on the in depth quantification of visual (perceptual) deficits in children with uCP and their relation to bimanual motor control and the underlying brain lesions. CP is a heterogenous, permanent, nonprogressive group of movement and posture disorder due to a lesion of the fetal or infant brain. It is recognized as the most common cause of childhood disability where the most frequent impairments are in the motor and visual system leading to difficulty in coordination and bimanual performances. Several studies investigated the relationship between such dysfunctions as well their correlation with the underlying brain lesions. Currently, the presence of brain abnormalities is mostly based on structural magnetic resonance. We aim to further investigate uCP children's ability in the visual and bimanual motor domain, using both clinical assessments and robotic technology. Furthermore, MRI techniques such as diffusion MRI and lesion segmentation will be used to map the underlying brain lesion and study brain connectivity. Lastly, the mentioned methods will be integrated to develop a model to further establish the relationship between vision and bimanual performance in children with unilateral CP.