Associate Professor Melanie Fleming is part of the Plasticity Group. We spoke to her ahead of her Departmental Seminar.
Tell us a little about yourself, and what attracted you to working at the University of Oxford?
I have been fascinated by the brain and ways to improve recovery of movement after stroke for a long time. After many years working as a research assistant in New Zealand and London I was eventually persuaded to do my PhD (in London). During that time I figured out that if I wanted my research to make a real difference, then working with Heidi Johansen-Berg and Charlie Stagg would be a good way to do that. Luckily they seemed to agree and I came to join Heidi’s lab as a postdoc in 2017.
How did you get to where you are today? Can you tell us more about your career path?
I haven’t exactly done things the quick way. I first got involved in research through a summer project in the Movement Neuroscience Lab at the University of Auckland (NZ) towards the end of my BSc in sport and exercise sciences. I found research to be exciting and it came quite naturally to me, so I continued working as a research assistant on a stroke rehabilitation trial while I did my MSc (part time). I then moved to London to “spend a year traveling” and instead spent 3 more years as an RA on another stroke rehab trial at King’s College London before being convinced it was about time to stop being an RA and do my PhD!
Since joining NDCN 8 years ago I’ve been able to work on an array of mechanistic and clinical projects and learnt a lot.
Can you give us a brief overview of your research?
I’m interested in understanding how people recover from a brain injury, such as stroke, and finding ways to improve outcomes. We know that sleep is important for brain health but sleep is typically an overlooked aspect of recovery after brain injury. My aims are therefore to try to understand how sleep is affected by brain injury and how we can manipulate sleep processes to boost recovery. This includes using questionnaires, actigraphy and low-density EEG to measure sleep in hospital and at home, alongside a combination of behavioural methods (e.g. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Insomnia) and neuromodulation (e.g. brain stimulation) to try to improve sleep.
What is the aim/vision for your research?
My overarching aim is to develop and test interventions to improve recovery that can be translated to clinical care.
What can we expect from your Departmental Seminar?
I will present a series of studies assessing sleep and recovery after brain injury, and results of a randomised controlled trial to test digital CBT for insomnia in community dwelling stroke survivors.
What key question are you trying to answer in your Departmental Seminar?
Can and should we target sleep after brain injury?