News

Healthy brains for healthy childhoods: Neuroscience at the service of children's rights

ACHUCARRO (Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience) has just launched a new scientific outreach channel dedicated to Brain Health in Children, within a broader collaboration program with the UNICEF Basque Country Committee.

This channel was developed by a diverse group of scientists from ACHUCARRO, coordinated by Ikerbasque Research Professor Dr. Amanda Sierra, in collaboration with Dr. Celia Martínez Pérez, and predoctoral researchers Marco González Domínguez and Joel Maldonado Teixidó.

The goal of this team and this information channel is to promote healthy, evidence-based growth in children, with a particular focus on the role of the brain as an integrator of environmental stimuli (such as nutrition and sleep), a repository of memory and learning, and responsible for our mental health.

To this end, ACHUCARRO produces specific, freely accessible monographic content based on up-to-date scientific evidence, of interest to parents, educators, and healthcare professionals. The first monograph is titled "Obesity in Pregnancy and Childhood," and explains the impact of nutrition in early stages of children's development on the development of obesity and its long-term detrimental effects. The material is available online in both Spanish and Basque.

UNICEF – ACHUCARRO Collaboration

UNICEF and Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience signed a collaboration agreement in early July, although the collaboration began, more informally, months earlier.

Through this agreement, both entities demonstrate their interest in conducting joint research and publishing to generate relevant knowledge and scientific results that help promote the achievement of all the rights of children and adolescents, as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, so that they may become a universal social reality, becoming permanent ethical principles and standards of international conduct.