Research summary
In Canada, over 140,000 children and teenagers suffer a brain injury each year due to trauma, stroke, cerebral palsy, and brain cancer. Children are often left with permanent thinking and learning problems. Currently, there are no effective medical therapies to help brain recovery and reduce disability following an acquired brain injury. Dr. Mabbott hopes to change this by understanding the innate plasticity of the brain; how the brain can grow and adapt – with a focus on white matter. Our brain connections are insulated with a fatty white substance called myelin. Across the entire brain this insulation is called white matter. White matter helps in sending messages and the growth of new white matter – or white matter plasticity - is thought to be very important in brain communication. Disrupted white matter plasticity occurs in many brain disorders and can cause difficulties in thinking. Despite this problem, it is not yet known how white matter plasticity has an impact on the brain communication that produces thinking. It is important to know this because understanding these links can help us in creating and testing new treatments for brain injuries.
Dr. Mabbott’s work will focus on children and teenagers who survive a malignant brain tumour. These children often sustain a brain injury as a consequence of the cranial radiation therapy used to cure them and are left with devastating learning problems. Dr. Mabbott will: (a) use network neuroscience to discover whether white matter plasticity helps support thinking through fine-tuning brain communication; (b) examine whether a novel radiation modality, proton radiation, spares thinking skills compared to the current standard of treatment; and (c) conduct clinical trials focused on treatments that harness white matter plasticity for recovery of thinking skills. To accomplish these goals, he will use novel neuroimaging to measure the growth of white matter and brain activation. Standardized psychological tests will be used to study thinking skills. Dr. Mabbott’s research provides a model that can be applied to other types of brain injury and disease. He has expanded the scope of his work to include other injuries to white matter, including multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and sickle cell disease. Dr. Mabbott’s work has the potential to reduce devastating neurological morbidity and bring new hope to families dealing with the effects of brain injury in children and teenagers.