Bernadette Fitzgibbon - Experimental Neuropsychology Research Unit

In my role as the ENRU lab manager, I am involved in the maintenance of all the lab's experimental and behavioural tasks, assisting in lab grant applications, general administration tasks, and where necessary, offering technical supports to fellow students.

Biography

My undergraduate studies were carried out at Auckland University, New Zealand. In my honours year I investigated auditory processing using EEG followed by my MSc which used fMRI to investigate cognitive functioning in Neuro-psychiatric Systemic Lupus Erythematosus patients.

My interests include behavioural neuroscience, cogntive neuroscience, neuropsychology, neuroimaging and evolution.

I have worked as a research assistant for Auckland University, continuing the lupus investigations begun in my masters year. I have also been involved in the neuropsychological assessment of survivors of stroke as a Research Neuropsychologist for the Clinical Trials Research Unit of Auckland University .

Research Projects

Human survival is dependent on the ability to interact within a social context. The ability to empathise, or understand other people’s emotional states, is crucial for successful social interaction. Recently, cognitive neuroscientists have begun to make progress in understanding the neural basis of empathy. I wish to investigate what occurs in the brain when people not only empathise with another person’s pain but also have a physical response to it. This is termed synaesthesia for pain; the sensation in one part of the body (pain) produced by a stimulus (pain) observed or imagined in another.

Just over a decade ago neurons that activate during both the observation and execution of goal-directed actions (“mirror neurons”) were found in the macaque brain. Convergent research with functional brain imaging has since shown that there is overlap in areas of brain activation when people experience their own emotions and when they witness emotions in others This suggests that not only are mirror neurons involved in understanding the actions of others, but also their emotional state.

In particular, it has been shown that the areas involved in processing pain (the “pain matrix”) are activated both when experiencing pain and when seeing or thinking about pain in another person. Presently, there are few published cases where this empathic response has caused an actual perception of pain. Giummarra and Bradshaw of Monash University have now, however, documented 10 cases of this. Interestingly, all cases have a history of prior severe, traumatic or chronic pain, e.g. amputations, traumatic childbirth.

On the basis of the above findings it has been proposed that the phenomenon of synaesthesia for pain may be the result of painful experiences (i.e. amputation) causing the disinhibition of the mirror system for pain. I plan to test this hypothesis using the techniques of electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Publications

Johnson, B.W.; Hautus, M.J.; Hayns, A.L.; Fitzgibbon, B.M. (2006) Differential cortical processing of location and pitch changes in dichotic pitch. NeuroReport, 17(4), 389-393.

Fitzgibbon, B.; Fairhall, S.; Kirk, I.,; Kalev-Zylinska, M.; Pui, K.; Dalbeth, N.; Keelan, S.; Robinson, E.; During, M.; McQueen, F. (2008). Functional MRI in NP-SLE patients reveals increased parietal and frontal brain activation during a working memory task compared with controls. Rheumatology, 47, 50-53.