Robin Green, PhD

Dr. Robin Green's program of research addresses brain and behavioural mechanisms of recovery from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Her lab has shown that in addition to beneficial mechanisms that support recovery, there are deleterious mechanisms in the sub-acute and chronic stages of injury giving rise to cognitive and neural deterioration. Moreover, her lab recently demonstrated that volumetric losses to the whole-brain, hippocampus and corpus callosum are substantive and affect the large majority of patients.

Her lab is focused on re-conceptualizing TBI as a chronic and possibly neurodegenerative disease process; this novel conception is needed in order to identify parallels with other forms of neurodegeneration in order to open new avenues of treatment. A converging program of research concerns chronic traumatic encephalopathy - another progressive disorder secondary to TBI, but the result of multiple mild events. Encouragingly, the lab has found an association between "environmental enrichment" and reduced neurodegeneration in TBI. Using findings from these basic research programs, she is currently engaged in the development of interventions to improve cognitive and neural recovery by offsetting deterioration using environmental enrichment in concert with other clinical interventions.