Psychological And Neurodevelopmental assessment of Neonatal Encephalopathy

The aim of this project is to characterise the developmental and psychological outcomes of infants
with hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy. Neonatal brain injury is a common cause of mortality and
disability. Neonatal encephalopathy (NE) is one of the commonest causes of neonatal brain injury in
full term infants. For every baby that dies from NE, another will survive with significant lifelong
disability. Ireland is at the forefront of research in the field of neonatal brain injury and a recent
HRB funded study by researchers in this consortium has shown that even infants with mild
encephalopathy can have cognitive impairments at 5 years of age.
This project will focus on the neurodevelopmental, cognitive, linguistic and socio-emotional followup
of NE infants, using standardised developmental assessments. A further focus of the study will
be on parent-infant interactions as predictive of a host of developmental outcomes, including selfregulation,
linguistic and cognitive competencies and executive functioning. The influence of
neurobiological risk, such as that which may arise from NE, may disrupt parent-infant interaction
and influence the course of development, as has been shown in the context of prematurity. To date,
no research has considered the nature of parent-infant interactions in the context of NE.
The successful applicant will join a team of PhD students working on similar questions with various
clinical and community groups and will experience the holistic overview of research in this area
involving the entire translational paradigm from basic science research, translational clinical
research, clinical trials to epidemiology and population health while gaining in depth expertise in
their chosen area. The applicant will work closely with the directors of the Infant & Child Research
Laboratory to collect new data with this clinical cohort using observational methods and
developmental assessments, for which training will be provided. In addition to the research
expertise, this collaboration will allow the development of advanced standardisation of reporting
and discussing neurodevelopmental findings with families.

Further details: https://www.crdi.ie/neptune/