Speaker Profile Vivette Glover
Vivette Glover is currently Professor of Perinatal Psychobiology at Imperial College London. She was trained as a biochemist at Oxford and did her PhD in neurochemistry at University College London. She then moved to Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital, London. In more recent years she has applied her expertise in biological psychiatry to the problems of mothers and babies. In 1997 she set up the Fetal and Neonatal Stress Research Group. The aims are to study fetal and neonatal stress responses, methods to reduce them, and long term effects. The effects of psychopathology in the mother, both on the developing fetus and longer term on the child are also being studied. This is a new field for study, and one which involves linking obstetrics, paediatrics, psychology and psychiatry.
Recent projects of interest include studies characterising the stress responses of the fetus, and the first trial of analgesia in the fetus; studies showing that maternal antenatal stress or anxiety increases the risk for a range of emotional, behavioural and cognitive adverse outcomes for the child; and studies showing possible mechanisms by which maternal stress or anxiety may affect the development of the fetus.
This work is showing the importance of the fetal period, and the emotional state of the mother during pregnancy, for the later neurodevelopment of the child.
She has published over 400 papers.