FAQs

The aim of this study is to understand how infants come to detect social cues and why they choose to socialise.

If you would like to have more information or schedule an appointment please feel free to contact us by email or by phone:

email: bonds_babylab@bbk.ac.uk 

phone: +44 75 1991 37 64

The BONDS study takes place in the brand-new ToddlerLab, which is located just around the corner of the Babylab. The address is ToddlerLab, 32, Torrington Square, WC1E 7JL. For maps and more information click here.

Travel costs of up to a total of £40.00 will be reimbursed. If you decide to travel to the Babylab by private car we offer free parking right in front of our building for visiting parents.

We will arrange a visit on a date that is convenient for you. The visit will take ~ 1 hr 30 minutes. Your baby will complete tasks such as watching faces and colourful animations on a computer or play games with a researcher. During these tasks, we will record your baby's brain activity using a sensor net (EEG and NIRS neuroimaging techniques). 

Participation is voluntary and the whole visit is tailored to your child’s needs. You will be present throughout. If you wish to withdraw, at any time, for any reason, you can do so without penalty. At the end of your visit, we will give a small gift and a certificate to your child to thank him/her for taking part. 

We will also ask you to fill in some online questionnaires prior to your visit. 

EEG and NIRS are two neuroimaging techniques teaching us about brain development and allowing to have a deeper understanding of brain areas and activity. If in both cases your child will just need to wear a sensor hat while doing activities, the way brain signal comes to be detected is different according to the technique used. 

Our brain cells communicate using electric signals, which can be picked up using electroencephalogram (EEG). This technique allows us to measure natural occurring electrical activity in the human brain while doing different activities. 

The amount of oxygen in the blood supplied to the brain quite often changes and measuring these changes can be easily done with near infrared spectroscopy  (NIRS). The innovative idea of this technique consists in shining weak rays of light into the head and measure the colour of the light reflected back. This is important because whenever you respond to something, your brain need lots of oxygen to be used and your blood will be red like your arteries. On the other hand, when less oxygen is present, your blood will be bluer just like your veins. Measuring these colour changes allows us to have a deeper understanding of which areas are involved in different behaviours (i.e. child does an activity or watches something on the television). 

It is important to note that both EEG and NIRS are completely safe, widely used with infants and that there is no risk associated: EEG hat uses wireless signals to send information to the computer in the same way that baby monitors would send signals to each other, while thinking of NIRS we can say that just like the natural light does not change objects when it is reflected on them, the weak red light rays that we use do not have any effect on the brain.

You will be with your child at all times, and we will do our best to ensure that these sessions are fun and enjoyable for both of you. 

You are more than welcome to bring other siblings. We have a comfortable waiting room with toys and space to play and can arrange for someone to sit with them whilst you and your baby are taking part in the studies. However, we do ask that you let us know in advance if you are bringing anyone else so we can make the necessary arrangement.

You are also welcome to bring your own carer, such as another family member or friend on your visit. All of their travel costs are also reimbursed. We are also pleased to provide reimbursement for childcare costs if you prefer not to bring your older children along.

Your participation will be helpful for understanding the reason why infants choose to socialise and also what could be done to help them develop this skill. Furthermore, possible interventions aimed to facilitate the development of brain regions that are important for social interactions could be thought in the future.

No risks or side-effects are expected. The testing procedures we employ are widely used with young infants and children, and are completely non-invasive. All visits to the Babylab are geared towards your baby's needs and we have feeding, changing, and napping facilities at our centre. Participation is voluntary and you and your child are free to withdraw from the study at any stage for any reason. 

At the beginning of the study, the child is given a unique ID associated with any personal information and in this form personal data are kept within the Centre of Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD) indefinitely so that you can be informed of any other researches you could potentially be involved in; if at some point you are no longer interested in knowing about these opportunities you can just let us know and we will remove your contact details from our database.

If you are happy to consent, your child’s anonymised research data collected in this study will be shared with the research community though a Trusted Digital Repositories and data sharing will be done following the General Data Protection Regulation (Data Protection Act 2018). Once the data are shared, you will not be able to withdraw your consent because all data will be anonymised.

Results are usually published in the scientific literature. No individuals’ names will be included. In addition, we will include summaries of our research findings on our CBCD website (http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/babylab) and affiliated websites.