Interrogating the Sleeping Fetal and Infant Brain
William (Bill) Fifer, Ph.D.
This webinar was presented live on September 10, 2021. If you missed it, check it out here.
Webinar Presented by William (Bill) Fifer, Ph.D.
William (Bill) Fifer, Ph.D. is a Professor of Medical Psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center and Chief of the Division of Developmental Neuroscience at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Fifer’s research interests involve studies of fetal and infant physiological and neurobehavioral responses to environmental challenges during sleep and the effects of prenatal exposures on later neurodevelopment. He has active collaborations with multiple departments at Columbia University and the University of South Dakota, Kings College in London and the Universities of Stellenbosch and University of Cape Town in South Africa. With funding from NIH, the Sackler Institute, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation he and his team are involved in multiple longitudinal birth cohort studies investigating the effects of prenatal adverse exposures on brain/behavior development. during sleep and subsequent risk for neurodevelopmental disorders including sudden infant death syndrome and autism spectrum disorders.
In recent years, there has been growing interest in understanding the role of sleep in shaping fetal and infant brain and behavioral development neonatal learning and memory. Sleep facilitates neural network maturation and memory consolidation processing. During sleep, infants are processing sensory inputs and integrating information about their environments. With our colleagues we are developing methods for assessing maternal, fetal, and infant sleep physiological processes and sleep health.
In this talk, Dr. Fifer will present recent findings on autonomic and central nervous system function during sleep, how these processes are shaped by environmental conditions and describe how these sleep phenotypes are related to childhood neurodevelopmental outcomes related to attentional and emotional regulation.