A View from the Future

Presented by Dr. Jane Bernstein

This webinar was presented live on Wednesday March 6th, 2024 at 4pm US Eastern time. Through the kindness of the presenter, a recording of the webinar is available here.

Dr. Jane Bernstein

Experience in the womb and in infancy is the bedrock for the subsequent development of the child, the adolescent and the adult. Dr. Bernstein will present a variety of observations that highlight the value of this principle from the perspective of a neuropsychologist charged with helping a child and family understand why her or his developmental trajectory has been derailed. 

Dr. Bernstein grew up in England. After college she worked in Algeria with Voluntary Service Overseas (the British equivalent of Peace Corps) teaching English as a foreign language. She returned to graduate with a Ph.D. from Edinburgh University in Scotland and then went to the US as a postdoctoral fellow in the Aphasia Research Center at the Boston VA Medical Center. Subsequently she moved to Boston Children’s Hospital where she is now a Senior Attending Neuropsychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and a Faculty member of the Center for Neuropsychology. She is also an Associate Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist provider in Massachusetts. In 2004 she stepped down as director of the Neuropsychology Program at Children's Hospital and since then has been dividing her time between teaching and research responsibilities at Boston Children’s Hospital, professional work with children in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies, and international clinical consultation and teaching.

With her colleague, Dr. Deborah Waber, Dr. Bernstein laid the groundwork for a neuropsychologically-framed clinical model for assessment of the developing child and has explored and extended the implications of this model in her work with both children and families and neuropsychology trainees in subsequent years. Her primary professional identity has been and continues to be a clinical teacher. Over (now) several decades, she has been privileged to contribute to the development of more than one generation of neuropsychologists, deriving considerable personal and professional enjoyment from their appreciation of her work and their many successes in our rapidly burgeoning discipline.

In Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Bernstein works with the Cotton Tree Foundation and the Immortelle Centre for Special Education where she has, with both local and US colleagues, developed a Service Learning Program providing psychological services to children and families. She has been involved in the training of Masters students in psychology at the University of the West Indies at St Augustine and provides ongoing professional development for early career psychologists locally. She has given workshops and presentations to educate both professional and lay groups about neuropsychology, neuropsychological assessment and neurobehavioral development with an emphasis on early childhood education. She has contributed to program development in providing services to under-resourced communities and is a co-investigator on a research team examining neurobehavioral development in the early primary school years.

A recording of the webinar is available here.