In her inaugural lecture, Professor Fernandez-Espejo will discuss how she has used neuroscientific methods to address clinical challenges in acquired brain injury and influence standards of care. She has pioneered neuroimaging approaches to detect consciousness from unresponsive patients and to identify the specific injuries that explain the complex deficits these patients present, providing new solutions for diagnosis and prognostication. Building from her mechanistic work, she developed and tested non-invasive brain stimulation interventions to improve outcomes after severe brain injury and is now trialling new therapeutic avenues using groundbreaking techniques such as focused ultrasound. Most recently, she has started to apply her methods to other neurological conditions such as mild traumatic brain injury or children with chronic fatigue after acquired brain injury. As well as providing an overview of her work, Davinia will reflect on her experience working within multidisciplinary teams and on the amazing people and places that she has met along the way.
Professor Davinia Fernández-Espejo is a psychologist and neuroscientist with a primary research interest in acquired brain injury. Davinia grew up in Avilés, a small town in Asturias (Spain). After studying Psychology at the University of Oviedo, she moved to Barcelona to complete an MSc in Neuroscience and PhD in Biomedicine under the supervision of Professor Carme Junque, and in collaboration with the University of Cambridge. She then worked with Professor Adrian Owen as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Western Ontario (Canada), where she subsequently became a senior research scientist at the Brain and Mind Institute. In September 2015, she joined the University of Birmingham to establish her independent research programme.
Professor of Neuropsychology and Clinical Neuroscience
School of Psychology
Professor Davinia Fernández-Espejo, School of Psychology, looks to understand how the brain supports consciousness and what goes wrong for patients to become entirely unaware after severe brain injury.
