Program
Overview
The Annual Conference will be held in Dublin, Ireland, at the Dublin Royal Convention Centre on September 7-8, 2025. A significant proportion of the 2025 FIT’NG Conference will again be devoted to interactive events such as workshops and poster sessions to maximize engagement across our community.
New this year, we are delighted to introduce symposium sessions, offering an opportunity for deeper discussion and collaborative exploration of key scientific themes.
Conference sessions will continue to focus on fetal, infant, toddler, or longitudinal scientific content-covering the three developmental windows at the heart of our society-and will highlight timely and innovative topics driving progress in our field.
Program at a Glance
View the at a glance program in PDF format
Speakers
Visit our speakers page for our 2025 information
Detailed Program
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Detailed Program
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08:30 – 8:45
FIT’NG Welcome & Introduction
08:45 – 10:15
Session 1: Methods: Acquisition and Processing
Chairs: Lilla Zöllei, Massachusetts General Hospital
Emma Margolis, Northeastern University
Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Baby Brain MRI Analysis
Gang Li, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Early human development of cerebellar and cerebro-cerebellar connectivity
Nina Treder, King’s College London
Optically pumped magnetometers can measure brain responses to sensory information already in the fetus
Chiara Capparini, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Development of controllability in fetuses and infants is supported by synaptic density
Huili Sun, Yale University
10:15 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15
Symposium Session 1: Imaging Neurodevelopment at Unconventional Field Strengths: Revolutionising Insights into Early Human Brain Development
Chairs: Chiara Casella, King’s College London
Niall Bourke, King’s College London
Ultra-low field MRI of the neonatal brain: An unconventional field strength with conventional applications?
Daniel Cromb, Evelina Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust & King’s College London
The impact of antenatal maternal anaemia on child brain development in South Africa: neuroimaging findings from high (3T) and ultra-low field (64mT) MRI
Jessica Ringshaw, University of Cape Town & King’s College London
Illuminating fine-grain functional development of the human brain using ultra-high field MRI
Jucha Willers Moore, King’s College London
Mapping metabolic maturation in the neonatal brain with ultra-high field MRI topredict outcomes following extremely preterm birth
Inge van Ooijen, University Medical Center Utrecht
12:15 – 13:45
Lunch Provided Onsite
13:45 – 14:45
Keynote Presentation
Chair: Nadege Roche-Labarbe, University of Caen Normandy
Expanding the frontiers of neuroimaging in toddlers with wearable OPMMEG
Margot Taylor, Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto
14:45 – 15:10
Flash Talks #1
Chairs: Dustin Scheinost, Yale University
Huili Sun, Yale University
Combining functional ultrasound and high-density diffuse optical tomography forwhole brain connectivity imaging in the neonate (WIP)
Flora Faure, University College of London
Cortical morphology in very preterm born neonates with intraventricular hemorrhage
Lingkai Tang, Western University
The Role of the Neonatal Hypothalamus in Early Sleep Development
Katharina Pittner, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
The association of prenatal maternal depression and neonatal white matter
microstructure: The moderating role of maternal exposure
15:10 – 17:00
Poster Session 1 and Coffee Break
17:00 – 18:30
Session 2: Cognitive Development
Chairs: Rhodri Cusack, Trinity College, The University of Dublin
Áine Dineen, Trinity College
Early executive functions – what have we learned in the lab, from parents, and by measuring brain activity?
Karla Holmboe, School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol
Intrinsic timescales in the infant brain shorten from 6 to 18 months and relate to the alpha brain rhythm
Anna Truzzi, Queen’s University Belfast
Features learned from an infant’s perspective are more aligned with the infant brain
Cliona O Doherty, Trinity College Dublin
Simultaneous EEG-fMRI investigation of sound sequence processing in neonates
Parvaneh Adibpour, Kings College London
20:00 – Onwards
Trainee committee social event at Porterhouse Temple Bar, 16-18 Parliament Street
08:30 – 10:00
Symposium Session 2: Understanding sensory development with task functional neuroimaging in the perinatal period
Chairs: Julia Moser, University of Minnesota
Investigating multisensory integration in third trimester fetuses using fMEG
Dimitrios Metaxas, University of Tübingen
Auditory oddball habituation and risk for anxiety in neonates
Maria Catalina Camacho, Washington University in St. Louis
Mapping the key components of caregiving: Early brain responses to gentle caress and speech
Isabella Mariani Wigley, University of Turku
Neural encoding of phonetic features at birth and in 3 month-old infants using EEG
Claire Njoo, Université Paris-Sud
10:00 – 10:30
Coffee Break
10:30 – 12:00
Think Tank: Elephants in the Room
Join us for one of these small group discussions led by faculty in the field!
- How can we best characterize/measure the effect of early environments on brain
development, and how can we account for genetic confounds? - Do we only study chill babies? How infant temperament and emotional states shape
FIT neuroimaging - Adding to the cognitive developmentalist’s toolkit: FIT imaging to test alternative
explanations - Methodology gap: Which critical methods are still missing to study early brain development
- Clinical thresholds: Distinguishing atypicality from adaptive variability in early brain
development
12:00 – 13:30
Lunch Provided Onsite
13:30 – 15:00
Session 3: Clinical Questions
Chairs: Tomoki Arichi, King’s College London
Marta Korom, National Institute of Mental Health
The gutbrain axis in early life
James Boardman, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh
Early postnatal cortical microstructural development and its association with early psychopathology risk
Yanbin Niu, Vanderbilt University
Does Fetal Sex Modulate Risk and Resilience in Brain Development in Congenital Heart Disease: A Multi-site MRI Study
Sian Wilson, Harvard Medical School
Dose-dependent effects of prenatal opioid exposure on infant neurodevelopmental trajectories
Janelle Liu, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
15:00 – 15:20
Flash Talks #2
Chairs: Brittany Howell, Virginia Tech
Shelby Leverett, Washington University in Saint Louis
The Roles of prenatal disadvantage and postnatal enrichment on structural
development of the cortex from birth to age three
Lisa Gorham, Washington University in St. Louis
Mapping the functional organization of the neonatal basal ganglia and thalamus
Samantha Blake, Washington University in St. Louis
Early brain development of functional networks and impact of preterm birth
Qianwen Chang, King’s College London
Development of manual skills and lateralized brain activity during infancy:
A longitudinal fNIRS study
Claudio Ferre, Boston University
15:20 – 17:00
Poster Session 2 and Coffee Break
17:00 – 18:30
Session 4: Social, Emotional, and Language Development
Chairs: Lindsey Powell, University of California
Juliette Champaud, University College London
Understanding early development through the parentchild interactome
Victoria Leong, Nanyang Technological University
Associations between frontolimbic white matter organization and inhibition to
novelty in infancy
Alexander Dufford, Oregon Health & Science University
Electrophysiological maturation predicts speech processing in infancy:
Evidence from neural tracking of naturalistic speech
Tineke Snijders, Tilburg University
Investigating newborns’ representations of language prosody with NIRS-EEG
Jessica Gemignani, University of Padova
18:30 – 18:45
FIT’NG Society Updates
Learn more about the society and the future
*Program may be subject to change