Dr Arichi has been working with the School since 2012, after completing his PhD at Imperial College London. His research is centred around developing and applying novel imaging methods for studying the developing human brain. "A particular focus is understanding how activity first emerges in the brain, which I study using functional MRI methods," said Dr Arichi.

When asked why he was drawn to this line of study, he explained, "In my clinical work, I manage the care of children who unfortunately have long-term neurodevelopmental difficulties as a result of a brain injury around the time of birth. Through this work, I realised there is so much we don’t know about how the brain first develops, and how this development is influenced by diseases and environmental factors. Unfortunately, we can only provide treatments for symptoms when they arise, as we don’t have the mechanistic insight to definitively cure these problems."

Recently, Dr Arichi was awarded a £2.1 million Senior Clinical Fellowship grant from the Medical Research Council (MRC). The funding will enable a new programme of cutting-edge research which he hopes will markedly increase our understanding of how the human brain first develops.

"The Fellowship will study how the outermost layer of the brain (the cortex) develops in the crucial period around birth. Activity in the cortex is essential to allow interaction with the world around us and with other people. However, it is not known how the cortex and its activity first mature at the start of our lives, or how the cortex changes to allow young children to develop learning and socialising skills as toddlers. The goal of my research is to learn how abnormal cortical development can arise in early human life, and how it can lead to difficulties with behaviour and learning in later childhood," says Dr Arichi.

Supporting his research will be the ultra-high field 7 Tesla MRI scanner recently installed at the School's imaging facilities in St Thomas' Hospital. "We are extremely privileged to have one of the few 7T MRI scanners installed in a hospital setting in the entire world, meaning we are uniquely placed to study this subject in detail, especially in terms of imaging very young and fragile newborn infants. This work is completely unique worldwide and due to the much higher detail provided by a 7T scanner, we can gain entirely new insights into brain activity in this crucial period of early life."

Dr Arichi will be studying a group of toddlers to understand the brain changes underlying new behaviours as they emerge in early childhood: "Studying these phenomena in detail was previously not possible - partly because it is extremely challenging to study young children inside an MRI scanner. We have developed a new virtual reality (VR) system that provides a fun and immersive experience for a child having an MRI scan; for the first time, it can allow detailed pictures of the brain to be acquired from a child whilst they are awake and playing in the VR environment."

Dr Arichi hopes that the impact of this research will go beyond academia at King's. "The results will provide unprecedented knowledge about early cortical development and its effects on early interaction in humans. I look forward to sharing this information and methods openly so that they can be used by the scientific community to answer fundamental questions about the cortex and its development."