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Rebeccah Slater

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Professor
Rebeccah Slater
NationalityBritish
Alma materImperial College London (BSc), University College London (MSc, PhD)
Scientific career
FieldsPaediatric Neuroscience, Paediatric Pain
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
ThesisCortical Pain Processing in the Infant Brain (2007)
Doctoral advisorMaria Fitzgerald
Websitewww.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk/team/rebeccah-slater

Rebeccah Slater is Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience and a Senior Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.[1] She is also a Professorial Fellow in Neuroscience at St John's College.[2]

Her research focuses on infant pain, using non-invasive neuroimaging techniques to improve understanding and measurement of pain in preterm (premature) and term infants. In this regard she has established the Paediatric Neuroimaging Group (circa 2013), which aims ultimately to improve neonatal care through developing quantitative neuroimaging measures of pain in infants and translation to clinical practice.[3]

Research and Career

Slater established the Paediatric Neuroimaging Group at Oxford University in 2013 as an Associate Professor of Paediatric Neuroimaging, which she continues to lead. She was awarded a Title of Distinction by Oxford University in 2018 to become a Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience.[4] She is also a Senior Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, was awarded a Statutory Chair in Paediatric Neuroimaging in 2019 and has been a Professorial Fellow at St John’s College Oxford since 2019.[2][1]

Slater's work constituted the first evidence for specific cortical pain response in premature infants (from 25 weeks old), by measuring blood-flow changes in the brain (using NIRS) during clinically required blood tests compared to non-painful tactile stimulation [5]. She was also the first to directly measure pain-specific neural activity (using EEG) in infants [6], also during clinically required blood tests. This EEG measure was then developed by Slater and her research group into a general EEG template for measuring pain response in infants - a significant step towards using objective neuroimaging tools to evaluate pain experience in infants - which has been used to validate pain relief interventions for infants during clinical procedures [7][8]. She is an advocate for neuroimaging tools for objective measurement of infant pain, and has demonstrated that brain activity could be more sensitive to pain responses in infants than other common assessment tools [9][10].

As well as work directly within her research group, she is a collaborator on the developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP), a large-scale multi-centre project to develop the first developmental map of human brain connectivity between 20-44 weeks of age, that will include and link imaging, clinical, behavioural and genetic information [11]. She has also been on the scientific organising committee for the International Symposium on Paediatric Pain [12].

She is also part of a collaboration to develop wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanners for children, described by Physics World as one of the Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2019 [13].

Public Engagement and Media

Slater is considerably involved in public engagement and media communication. With her research group, she has produced several videos for a public audience to communicate research in infant pain and neuroimaging [14] as well as developing artwork and games in collaboration with artists [15], and her group is very active at public engagement events and science festivals such as the Cheltenham Science Festival [16].

She has appeared on radio and podcasts to talk about measurement and understanding of infant pain, including Radio 4 pieces "From agony to analgesia" [17], Case Notes with Dr Mark Porter [18], as well as the BBC World Service: Health Check [19], and The Naked Scientists podcast "Do Newborn Babies Feel Pain?" [20]. She has also appeared on BBC News[21], and in articles by the BBC[22], The Guardian[23], and Scientific American[24] to communicate advances in measuring and managing infant pain.

References

  1. ^ a b "Rebeccah Slater — Department of Paediatrics". www.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.
  2. ^ a b "Professor Rebeccah Slater". St John's College.
  3. ^ "Paediatric Neuroimaging Group — Paediatric Neuroimaging". neuroimaging.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.
  4. ^ https://gazette.web.ox.ac.uk/files/27september2018-no5215redactedpdf
  5. ^ Slater, Rebeccah; Cantarella, Anne; Gallella, Shiromi; Worley, Alan; Boyd, Stewart; Meek, Judith; Fitzgerald, Maria (April 5, 2006). "Cortical Pain Responses in Human Infants". Journal of Neuroscience. 26 (14): 3662–3666. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0348-06.2006. PMID 16597720 – via www.jneurosci.org.
  6. ^ Slater, Rebeccah; Worley, Alan; Fabrizi, Lorenzo; Roberts, Siân; Meek, Judith; Boyd, Stewart; Fitzgerald, Maria (December 13, 2010). "Evoked potentials generated by noxious stimulation in the human infant brain". European Journal of Pain. 14 (3): 321–326. doi:10.1016/j.ejpain.2009.05.005 – via Wiley Online Library.
  7. ^ Hartley, Caroline; Duff, Eugene P.; Green, Gabrielle; Mellado, Gabriela Schmidt; Worley, Alan; Rogers, Richard; Slater, Rebeccah (May 3, 2017). "Nociceptive brain activity as a measure of analgesic efficacy in infants". Science Translational Medicine. 9 (388). doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aah6122. PMID 28469039 – via stm.sciencemag.org.
  8. ^ https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(18)31480-5.pdf
  9. ^ Slater, Rebeccah; Cantarella, Anne; Franck, Linda; Meek, Judith; Fitzgerald, Maria (June 24, 2008). "How Well Do Clinical Pain Assessment Tools Reflect Pain in Infants?". PLOS Medicine. 5 (6): e129. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050129. PMC 2504041. PMID 18578562 – via PLoS Journals.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link) CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  10. ^ Slater, Rebeccah; Cornelissen, Laura; Fabrizi, Lorenzo; Patten, Debbie; Yoxen, Jan; Worley, Alan; Boyd, Stewart; Meek, Judith; Fitzgerald, Maria (October 9, 2010). "Oral sucrose as an analgesic drug for procedural pain in newborn infants: a randomised controlled trial". The Lancet. 376 (9748): 1225–1232. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61303-7. PMID 20817247 – via www.thelancet.com.
  11. ^ "Teams and Collaborators | The Developing Human Connectome Project". www.developingconnectome.org.
  12. ^ "Scientific Committee". www.ispp2019.org.
  13. ^ "Physics World announces its Breakthrough of the Year finalists for 2019". Physics World. December 4, 2019.
  14. ^ "Videos — Paediatric Neuroimaging". neuroimaging.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.
  15. ^ "Things We've Made — Paediatric Neuroimaging". neuroimaging.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.
  16. ^ "Public Engagement with Research — Paediatric Neuroimaging". neuroimaging.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.
  17. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - From Agony to Analgesia, Seeing Pain". BBC.
  18. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/casenotes_20080729.shtml,http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/casenotes_tr_20080729.shtml
  19. ^ "BBC World Service - Health Check, 21/06/2010". BBC.
  20. ^ "Do Newborn Babies Feel Pain?". www.thenakedscientists.com. May 18, 2015.
  21. ^ "Rebeccah Slater talks to the BBC about infant pain — Department of Paediatrics". www.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk.
  22. ^ "Stroking babies 'provides pain relief'". December 18, 2018 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
  23. ^ "Babies feel pain 'like adults', MRI scan study suggests". April 21, 2015 – via www.theguardian.com.
  24. ^ Costandi, Moheb. "Is the Baby in Pain? Brain Scans Can Tell". Scientific American.
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