ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine current understandings of outcomes from early brain insult in the context of recent child-based research, which explores both traditional behavioural approaches as well as utilising findings from sophisticated neuroimaging tools. Plasticity is considered to be an intrinsic property of the brain, reflecting its capacity to respond dynamically, through modification to neural circuitry, in response to the environment and experience. Early brain insult refers to insult sustained from early gestation to pre-adolescence, a protracted timeline during which brain structures and/or their related functional correlates show most rapid maturation. Brain insult, be it vascular, traumatic, aplastic, hypoxic or degenerative, results in a 'cascade' of events, some detrimental and some beneficial, with the balance depending, to some extent, on the type of insult incurred and the nature of the subsequent pathology. The empirical base for effective treatments for child brain injury is limited and plagued by ethical and methodological challenges.
