Fetal Behaviour

Christa Einspieler has been working in behavioural analysis for over 20 years. She is currently Associate Professor in Physiology at the Medical University of Graz. Her main research topics are the ontogeny of behaviour, fetal movements, motor development in preterm, term and young infants, age-specific neurological assessments, neurolinguistics, and development of laterality. She is author or co-author of more than 70 scientific papers in indexed journals, and has contributed to more than 20 books from international publishers. Daniela Prayer is Professor of Neuroradiology at Vienna Medical School and Director of the Clinical Department of Neuroradiology and Musculoskeletal Radiology at the University Clinic of Radio Diagnostics, one of the worldwide leading centres of prenatal MRI. She is a member of the board of the Austrian Society of Perinatology as well as the International Society of Prenatal Diagnosis. Her research focuses on epilepsy, brain tumours, degenerative diseases and diffusion tensor imaging (measuring the diffusion movement of water molecules in body tissue using MRI) of peripheral nerves. Heinz Prechtl was a pioneer in the evaluation of the quality of spontaneous movements during early human development. He discovered that the quality of spontaneous general movements in the fetus and young infant could provide information on the integrity of the young nervous system. His approach to the qualitative assessment of general movements in newborn infants is a widely used, highly sensitive and specific tool in the prediction of neurological impairments.