Explore a new approach to healing brain injuries in neonates with EEG specialist Dr Kimberly Whitehead.
Dr Kimberley Whiehead
k.whitehead@ucl.ac.uk
Dr Kimberly Whitehead is an EEG specialist working at UCL on understanding the natural repair mechanisms of newborns, neonates and fetuses after a brain injury. She did her PhD in Dr Lorenzo Fabrizi’s lab at UCL on ‘Somatosensory-evoked and state-dependent neural activity during the equivalent of the last trimester of human gestation’. During 2019-20 she developed a statistical model of sleep-wake regulation in infants. Now her goal is to boost natural brainwaves to enhance damage repair in neonates.
After a brain injury, brainwaves immediately become flatter than usual, and then much bigger over the next weeks. These big brainwaves are hypothesized to be a natural repair mechanism. Dr Whitehead’s team studies whether we can boost these brainwaves using gentle, low-cost interventions such as touch and more sleep. This work could make a great difference in the development of preterm babies who suffer from brain injuries.