In 2020, Bernadette Gillick, PhD, MSPT, PT, now professor in the Division of Developmental Pediatrics and Rehabilitation Medicine, arrived at the Department of Pediatrics and the Waisman Center with over 30 years of clinical and research experience doing what she is both driven to do and passionate about.
Gillick is an expert in pediatric stroke and early brain injury, rehabilitation, neuromodulation, and neuroplasticity. As the director of the Waisman Center Pediatric Neuromodulation Lab, Gillick focuses her research on improving diagnosis of injury and enhancing rehabilitation methods that can be targeted to each patient’s development. Her neuromodulation work integrates non-invasive brain stimulation for children with brain injury, stroke, and cerebral palsy. She works with a dedicated and enthusiastic team from a range of fields investigating methods that may become established treatments.
Perinatal brain injury, including perinatal/neonatal stroke that results in encephalopathy, occurs in 1–3 per 1,000 infants. There are many causes, such as hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), caused by limited blood flow and oxygen deprivation around the time of birth, as well as cerebral palsy (CP), a group of disorders arising from abnormal brain development or damage to the developing brain. CP is the most common lifelong muscle weakness and motor impairment, with more than 17 million people affected globally. Historically, treatment of children with brain injuries was often limited and institutionalization was common. That has changed considerably over the last few decades, but change has been slow.
Gillick came to neuromodulation work through her early experiences providing physical therapy for cerebral palsy patients. Nearly 20 years ago, as new treatments for adult stroke patients were showing astounding results — arising from a fast-growing understanding of the brain’s plasticity and its ability to form new neural connections, adapting and compensating for damaged areas — Gillick was working as a physical therapist in Seattle. She described a “eureka moment” that she experienced while working with kids with cerebral palsy.
“We’re doing so much with adults who have had a stroke, I thought, why are we not putting the same type of emphasis on kids?” she said. “And I literally stood up from a treatment mat in Seattle Children’s Hospital, having seen yet another child with cerebral palsy, and said, ‘I’ve got to go back to school. I’ve got to do this.’ Childhood is such a heightened period of neuroplasticity, why are we not capitalizing on it?”
She instantly formed the question, “Why are we not doing more in our field for kids, especially since these kids typically live the same lifespan or nearly so as someone who’s developing typically?” Gillick realized that providers (and researchers) should emphasize all ages in treatments that build on brain plasticity. “It is certainly appropriate for those who are going to have a lifetime in front of them with challenges and impairments,” she explained.
Returning to school at the University of Minnesota, Gillick earned a PhD in rehabilitation science with a minor in neuroscience in 2011. She trained further with a Fellowship in Clinical Behavioral Trials from the NIH, for certification in non-invasive brain stimulation at Harvard University, in transcranial direct current stimulation from City College in New York in 2013, and in 2018 for general movement assessment in Auckland, New Zealand. From 2011 to 2020, she developed the Pediatric Neuromodulation Laboratory at the University of Minnesota and served as its director. Some of the non-invasive interventions Gillick employs are repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation, and trans-auricular vagal nerve stimulation.
The University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics recruited Gillick to join the department and develop a neuromodulation service here. She is the director of the laboratory, and this year, in the spring of 2025, the Waisman Neuromodulation Service opened. “It is a service for faculty to run their studies through,” Gillick explained, “not a service for the public yet, since we are not yet at that stage of FDA approval.” Faculty researchers can recruit children and adults to become participants in their neuromodulation studies, including non-invasive brain stimulation.
Most importantly for Gillick at present is the five-year study, the Baby Brain Recovery Study, applying new techniques in early diagnosis and early intervention that have not been done before in children affected by various kinds of brain injury.
“We’ve got families flying in from all over our nation to participate in this study,” Gillick said. “We have two years left of this five-year study and we’ve recruited 30 families. We can recruit up to 50 families. They can participate at four to five time points over the first two years of the child’s life to learn about their child’s recovery and development after early injury to the brain.”
Qiang Chang, PhD, professor in the Departments of Medical Genetics and Neurology, is the director of the Waisman Center. He has welcomed Gillick and her lab to the Waisman Center, acknowledging her extensive work in non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) methods to address pediatric brain injury:
“In recent years, non-invasive brain stimulation has been successfully and safely performed in children with cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and Down syndrome with promising outcomes and long-term effects,” Chang said. “Dr. Bernadette Gillick has been internationally recognized as a leader in applying NIBS in research involving children.”
Not only does Gillick serve as director of the Neuromodulation Laboratory, but she is also director of research design at the Institute of Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR). In addition, she is deeply involved in cerebral palsy organizations, including the Cerebral Palsy Foundation Scientific Advisory Council and the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. A reviewer for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Gillick also serves as reviewer for over 20 peer-reviewed medical journals.
Maria Stanley, MD, professor and chief of the Division of Developmental Pediatrics and Rehabilitative Medicine, as well as interim chief of the Division of Genetics and Metabolism, expressed her deep appreciation of Gillick’s work, expertise, and mentorship of others. “It has been an incredible gift for our division and our department to have Dr. Gillick as a member,” Stanley said. “She has brought her neuroscience research experience, as well as her willingness to share her expertise and mentor others. Her groundbreaking work in translational science supports the urgently needed development of evidence-based treatments for children with perinatal brain injury and risk for cerebral palsy.”