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Final Program


AT-A-GLANCE PDF

Caroline R. Schnakers, PhD

Associate Director of Research
Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Healthcare
Pomona, CA, United States

Dr. Schnakers is an internationally recognized clinical scientist who has been working in the neurorehabilitation field for the past 15 years. She focuses her research on brain-injured patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DOC) and, more particularly, on the treatment and assessment of their brain activity and cognitive functions using behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques.

She has shown that 40% of patients diagnosed in vegetative state are misdiagnosed and are actually conscious. She has developed electrophysiological paradigms for detecting conscious cognitive activity without the intervention of motor and verbal functions (using mental tasks) in severely brain-injured patients who are unable to actively interact with their surroundings. She has also created and validated the first scale allowing pain assessment in patients with DOC, which is now used internationally and translated in 8 different languages. Finally, she has recently been interested in developing innovative treatments for patients in DOC and has worked on several projects on Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound Pulsation in collaboration with UCLA.

She has published more than 110 articles (H-index: 53) in international peer-reviewed journals such as Neurology, Annals of Neurology, Nature Reviews Neurology and Lancet. She is the editor of the book Coma and Disorders of Consciousness, which is a reference in the field (1st Ed: Springer-Verlag, Paris, 2011; Springer-Verlag, London, 2012; 2nd Ed: Springer-Verlag, London, 2016; also translated in Chinese). She serves with Nathan Zasler as the chair of the Special Interest Group on DOC for the International Brain Injury Association (IBIA) and she is actively involved in the Curing Coma Campaign. She currently works as the associate director at the Research Institute of Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Healthcare (Pomona, CA). She is also Adjunct Research Assistant Professor in the NeuroSurgery Dept of the USC Keck School of Medicine.

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