Vicki Anderson (psychologist)

Last updated

Vicki Anderson FASSA FAHMS is an Australian clinical neuropsychologist and researcher. Since 2002 she has been the Theme Director of the Critical Care and Neurosciences group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and she established the Australian Centre for Child Neuropsychological Studies at the Royal Children's Hospital. [1] [2]

Contents

Biography

Anderson was born in Melbourne, Australia to parents John and Sylvia Biviano, and completed her high school education at Sacred Heart College in Geelong before a BA (Hons), MA (Clin Neuropsych) and PhD at the University of Melbourne. [1] [3] She worked at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne as a clinician, working with brain injured children. After several years Anderson began a lectureship at the University of Melbourne, teaching 'Development of the Thinking Child,' 'Principles of Psychological Assessment,' and 'Child Neuropsychological Disorders.' In 2002 she was appointed Professor and Director of Psychology at the Royal Children's Hospital. [1] [2]

Research focus

Anderson's research include developmental and acquired disorders of childhood that affect the central nervous system [2] including the long-term consequences of traumatic brain injury to the developing brain. Anderson has carried out longitudinal studies identifying neurocognitive and social deficits which develop and persist long after childhood injuries. The Australian Centre for Child Neuropsychological Studies diagnoses and treats these impairments. [2] [4] Additional ongoing research aims to understand the neuropsychological implications of cleft and craniofacial disorders, as well as investigating the impact of childhood multiple sclerosis and demyelination on family, social and academic functioning. [5]

Accolades

Anderson serves as Associate Editor for the BPS 'Journal of Neuropsychology' and the APA Division 40 journal 'Neuropsychology' and is a consulting editor on international journals specializing in neuropsychology. She has co-authored several textbooks and book chapters, and over 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications [2] with over 5000 citations. [6] She has served as President of the Australian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment, is a member of the APS College of Clinical Neuropyschologists [1] and also serves on the Board of Governors of the International Neuropsychological Society. [1] [2] She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia, [7] a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and a fellow of the Australasian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment. She is a Senior Practitioner Fellow of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee.[ citation needed ] In 2015 Anderson was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona Stanley</span> Australian epidemiologist

Fiona Juliet Stanley is an Australian epidemiologist noted for her public health work, her research into child and maternal health as well as birth disorders such as cerebral palsy. Stanley is the patron of the Telethon Kids Institute and a distinguished professorial fellow in the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Western Australia. From 1990 to December 2011 she was the founding director of Telethon Kids.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuropsychological test</span> Assess neurological function associated with certain behaviors and brain damage

Neuropsychological tests are specifically designed tasks that are used to measure a psychological function known to be linked to a particular brain structure or pathway. Tests are used for research into brain function and in a clinical setting for the diagnosis of deficits. They usually involve the systematic administration of clearly defined procedures in a formal environment. Neuropsychological tests are typically administered to a single person working with an examiner in a quiet office environment, free from distractions. As such, it can be argued that neuropsychological tests at times offer an estimate of a person's peak level of cognitive performance. Neuropsychological tests are a core component of the process of conducting neuropsychological assessment, along with personal, interpersonal and contextual factors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Luria</span> Russian neuropsychologist

Alexander Romanovich Luria was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He developed an extensive and original battery of neuropsychological tests during his clinical work with brain-injured victims of World War II, which are still used in various forms. He made an in-depth analysis of the functioning of various brain regions and integrative processes of the brain in general. Luria's magnum opus, Higher Cortical Functions in Man (1962), is a much-used psychological textbook which has been translated into many languages and which he supplemented with The Working Brain in 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clinical neuropsychology</span> Sub-field of neuropsychology concerned with the applied science of brain-behaviour relationships

Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-field of cognitive science and psychology concerned with the applied science of brain-behaviour relationships. Clinical neuropsychologists use this knowledge in the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and or rehabilitation of patients across the lifespan with neurological, medical, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, as well as other cognitive and learning disorders. The branch of neuropsychology associated with children and young people is pediatric neuropsychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuropsychological assessment</span> Testing to identify brain impairments, their severity & location

Neuropsychological assessment was traditionally carried out to assess the extent of impairment to a particular skill and to attempt to determine the area of the brain which may have been damaged following brain injury or neurological illness. With the advent of neuroimaging techniques, location of space-occupying lesions can now be more accurately determined through this method, so the focus has now moved on to the assessment of cognition and behaviour, including examining the effects of any brain injury or neuropathological process that a person may have experienced.

Professor Christos Pantelis is an Australian professor of medicine who is the Director of the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre.

Edith F. Kaplan was an American psychologist. She was a pioneer of neuropsychological tests and did most of her work at the Boston VA Hospital. Kaplan is known for her promotion of clinical neuropsychology as a specialty area in psychology. She examined brain-behavioral relationships in aphasia, apraxia, developmental issues in clinical neuropsychology, as well as normal and abnormal aging. Kaplan helped develop a new method of assessing brain function with neuropsychological assessment, called "The Boston Process Approach."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muriel Lezak</span> American neuropsychologist (1927–2021)

Muriel Elaine Deutsch Lezak was an American neuropsychologist best known for her book Neuropsychological Assessment, widely accepted as the standard in the field. Her work has centred on the research, assessment, and rehabilitation of brain injury. Lezak was a professor of neurology at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine.

Warren S. Brown is a professor of psychology in the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary and the founding director of the Travis Research Institute. Brown received his doctorate in Experimental Physiological Psychology from the University of Southern California (1971). Prior to Fuller, Brown spent 11 years as a research scientist at the UCLA Brain Research Institute. He was a founding member of the National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum, the International Research Consortium on the Corpus Callosum and Cerebral Connectivity (IRC5), and the International Society for Science and Religion.The "Warren and Janet Brown Scholarship", given annually at Fuller to support students in neuropsychological research, was created to honor Brown and his wife.

Eleanor M. Saffran, an American neuroscientist, was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focused on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Saffran spelled out the methodological tenets of “cognitive neuropsychology” exemplified in her studies of aphasia, alexia, auditory verbal agnosia, and short-term memory impairment.

Pediatric neuropsychology is a sub-speciality within the field of clinical neuropsychology that studies the relationship between brain health and behaviour in children. Many pediatric neuropsychologists are involved in teaching, research, supervision, and training of undergraduate and graduate students in the field.

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, is professor of clinical neuropsychology at the department of psychiatry and Medical Research Council (MRC)/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge. She is also an honorary clinical psychologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. She has an international reputation in the fields of cognitive psychopharmacology, neuroethics, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry and neuroimaging.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy V. M. Bishop</span> British psychologist

Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop is a British psychologist specialising in developmental disorders specifically, developmental language impairments. She is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she has been since 1998. Bishop is Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children's Communication Impairments (OSCCI). She is a supernumary fellow of St John's College, Oxford.

Jennie Louise Ponsford is an Australian neuroscience researcher at Monash University, Victoria who has a special interest in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Jennie is a clinical neuropsychologist, whose work is focused on developing a deeper understanding of the negative consequences of TBI, particularly those related to fatigue, sleep disturbance, attentional, memory and executive problems, psychiatric and behavioural disturbances and sexuality, and the development of rehabilitation interventions to improve long term recovery and quality of life in individuals with TBI.

Kathryn Nance North is a paediatric physician, neurologist, and clinical geneticist. In 2013, she was appointed Director of the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and was named the David Danks Professor of Child Health Research at the University of Melbourne. In 2012, North was appointed chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council Research Committee. In 2014, she was appointed vice chair of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and co-chair of its Clinical Working Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen P. Hinshaw</span>

Stephen P. Hinshaw is an American psychologist whose contributions lie in the areas of developmental psychopathology and combating the stigma that surrounds mental illness. He has authored more than 325 scientific articles and chapters as well as 14 authored and edited books. Currently, he is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor In Residence and Vice Chair for Child and Adolescent Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. His work focuses on child and adolescent mental disorders, clinical interventions, mechanisms of change in psychopathology, and stigma prevention efforts, with a specialization in ADHD and other externalizing behavioral disorders.

Prof. Barbara Ann Wilson OBE is the founder of the Oliver Zangwill Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation in Ely, Cambridgeshire. She was appointed an OBE for her work in brain injury rehabilitation over 40 years for "medical rehabilitation". She was a clinical psychologist, and is now (2019) retired. She was shortlisted for a Lifetime Achievement Award in the NHS70 Parliamentary Awards in 2018 for her dedication to brain injury rehabilitation.

Developmental neuropsychology combines the fields of neuroscience and developmental psychology, while drawing from various other related disciplines. It examines the relationship of behavior and brain function throughout the course of an individual's lifespan, though often emphasis is put on childhood and adolescence when the majority of brain development occurs. Research tends to focus on development of important behavioral functions like perception, language, and other cognitive processes. Studies in this field are often centered around children or other individuals with developmental disorders or various kinds of brain related trauma or injury. A key concept of this field is that looks at and attempts to relate the psychological aspects of development, such as behavior, comprehension, cognition, etc., to the specific neural structures; it draws parallels between behavior and mechanism in the brain. Research in this field involves various cognitive tasks and tests as well as neuroimaging. Some of the many conditions studied by developmental neuropsychologists include congenital or acquired brain damage, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, executive dysfunction, seizures, intellectual disabilities, obsessive compulsive disorder, stuttering, schizophrenia, developmental aphasia, and other learning delays such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia.

Maureen Philomena Molloy was an Australian pioneer of clinical neuropsychology, cognitive rehabilitation therapy and forensic neuropsychology.

Kevin William Walsh AO was an Australian pioneer of the profession of clinical neuropsychology.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "About Us: Our Neurospyschology Staff". Melbourne Neuropsychology Services. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Professor Vicki Anderson". Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  3. Professor Vicki Anderson. "Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences". The University of Melbourne. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  4. "Chief Investigators". Moving Ahead: Center of Research Excellence in Brain Recovery. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  5. "Child Neuropsychology: Current Research Projects". Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  6. "Vicki Anderson". ResearchGate. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  7. "Professor Vicki Anderson". Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  8. "Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences" (PDF). Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. October 2016. Retrieved 11 September 2019.