Preterm birth and hypoxic-ischemic injury continue to be major causes of mortality and morbidity in infants and children and a significant public health challenge. Restoring the normal course of development and preventing cerebral dysfunction in these children is of high importance. Beginning in 1997, the Hershey Conference on Developmental Brain Injury has brought together international leaders in this field as well as esteemed scientists from outside, but related, fields toward the goal of finding new and better modes of improving health outcomes for children with developmental brain injuries.

This special issue of Developmental Neuroscience represents the proceedings of the 12th Hershey Conference on Developmental Brain Injury, which, due to the coronavirus pandemic, was held as a virtual meeting on June 3rd and June 4th 2021. The organizers were Drs. Susan Vannucci, Donna Ferriero, Henrik Hagberg, Pierre Gressens, Raul Chavez-Valdez, and Steven Levison, and they were assisted in hosting the meeting by the Redstone Agency, who set up a PheedLoop conference. As in previous years, this conference was an international meeting, but due to COVID-19, the meeting was smaller than usual. Nineteen speakers from 7 countries, including the USA, presented plenary or short talks with 80 additional poster presentations. The conference brought together over 100 clinicians, basic scientists, fellows, and graduate students in a relaxed setting to share their discoveries and thoughts with the goal of understanding the mechanisms that lead to perinatal brain injury, with specific emphasis on inflammation, brain development, and potential treatment strategies. Financial support was gratefully received from the NIH (NINDS 1R13NS106726) and Karger Publishing house. The 13th Conference on Developmental Brain Injury was recently held at the Alderbrook resort, in Union, Washington, organized by Sunny Juul, Elizabeth Nance, and Tommy Wood, and the 14th Hershey conference has been scheduled for the spring of June 2024 to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden. Drs. Henrik Hagberg and Carina Mallard offered to organize the next meeting.

A general call for articles for this special issue was announced at the 2021 conference, which resulted in many submissions. After rigorous peer review, 19 articles were selected for publication. Several papers in this issue report on the diverse mechanisms that contribute to developmental brain injuries including immune activation, microbiome, air pollution, and sex. New developments in identifying biomarkers for brain injury as well as progress in testing new neuroprotective therapies or refining existing hypothermia paradigms are included.

This special issue will be of interest to both clinicians and basic scientists who are interested in the developing nervous system, its vulnerability to injury, and the short- and long-term consequences for neurologic development. We hope the reader will find these articles both as stimulating and exciting as we have as editors.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

The authors have no funding to declare.

Authors Steven W. Levison and Dr. Raul Chavez-Valdez both contributed equally.

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