Hanne Huygelier
- On 25/10/2023
Degree:
I have a Master’s degree of Science in Experimental Psychology and Clinical Psychology, and a PhD in Psychology. Now, I am a postdoctoral fellow of the Rearch Foundation Flanders (FWO) at the Neuropsychologylab of KU Leuven.
Interest in neuropsychology:
I developed an interest in clinical neuropsychology during my bachelor and further specialized in this topic. During my education, I completed a clinical internship in an acute neurology ward and a research internship at KU Leuven supervised by Prof. Dr. Johan Wagemans. During my PhD I developed a special interest in psychometrics, computational modelling and Bayesian statistics. I plan to further investigate the potential of computational modelling and Bayesian statistics for clinical neuropsychological diagnosis.
PhD project:
Shifting priorities: Precise assessment and immersive rehabilitation for hemispatial neglect
During my PhD project I worked on several research topics. A first project was to develop the Dutch version of the Oxford Cognitive Screen (OCS-NL). The OCS-NL is a short stroke-specific screening tool to evaluate the cognitive domains that are most often affected by stroke. We collected age- and version-specific normative data and data in stroke patients to validate the OCS-NL.
A second goal was to gain more insight in how to assess hemispatial neglect. We studied different psychometric questions with a novel method relying on modeling and Monte Carlo simulations. Using these simulation techniques we demonstrated that the currently used measures of neglect may not optimally differentiate between spatial and non-spatial errors and may increase false positive rates.
A third goal of my PhD project was to explore the potential of immersive virtual reality using the newest generation of head-mounted displays for rehabilitation of hemispatial neglect. We performed a systematic review to obtain an overview of how the term “virtual reality” has been defined in stroke rehabilitation, studied the attitudes of older adults towards immersive virtual reality and developed a new rehabilitation game for hemispatial neglect. We plan to evaluate the efficacy and feasibility of our new rehabilitation approach in a clinical trial in the next years.
Publications