Research

Chronic maternal stress during pregnancy can be detected in maternal and fetal heartbeat fluctuations. It turns out that stressed fetuses entrain their heartbeat to the maternal heartbeat, but the non-stressed fetuses do not. I enjoy being part of a multinational team focused on understanding how chronic maternal stress during pregnancy - endangering fetal brain development - can be detected early and what impact that interaction has on maternal and fetal physiology, in particular stress systems, on genomic, molecular, biophysical and behavioral levels.

See my research page on stress for more details.

Fetal EEG intrapartum: Can fetal EEG monitoring during labour help predict incipient brain injury? We hope this technology will reduce the rate of neonatal brain injury, such as cerebral palsy.

Read more here.

aECG antepartum: Read more here.

A recent commentary on the status of fetal monitoring during labor and future perspectives.