| Contact Information: | obucsea@yorku.ca |
| Degrees in Progress: | Ph.D. (Clinical-Developmental Psychology) |
| Degrees Completed: | M.A. (Clinical-Developmental Psychology) B.Sc. (Honours Psychology; Western University) |
Research Interests:
Infants admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) are frequently exposed to painful medical procedures in the absence of analgesia. One major barrier to adequately managing infant pain in NICUs is the lack of a reliable pain assessment tool. Current infant pain assessment tools mostly rely on broad Oana’s master’s thesis investigated the relationship between behavioural and cortical responses to painful procedures in hospitalized neonates. This study informed the field of infant pain as it was the first to use novel methodology to examine the convergence between pain-related facial actions and cortical activity across the whole scalp using electroencephalography (EEG), revealing a more complex relationship than previously proposed. Oana’s doctoral work will aim to discern patterns of preterm neonates’ stress-related cardiac responses during disruptive medical procedures in the NICU, and how these sources of stress subsequently influence infants’ cardiac and cortical responses during an acute painful procedure. In addition to her main areas of research, Oana has also either led or assisted with several side projects in the OUCH lab focusing on optimizing infant pain assessment and management strategies, as well as better understanding early patterns of infant pain-related distress responding using behavioural and physiological indicators.
Honours and Awards:
2023-2024 Ontario Graduate Scholarship; York University
2022-2023 LaMarsh Graduate Student Research Award; York University
2020-2023 Doctoral Award: Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship; Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
2020-2021 Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Declined); York University
2019: Ontario Graduate Scholarship; York University
2019: Meighen Wright Foundation Maternal-Child Health Graduate Scholarship; York University
2019: Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Graduate Student Travel Award
2018: CGS-Master’s Scholarship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); York University
2018: Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Declined); York University
2018: Graduate Entrance Scholarship; York University
Publications:
Rupawala, M., Bucsea, O., Laudiano-Dray, M.P., Whitehead, K., Meek, J., Fitzgerald, M., Olhede, S., Jones, L., & Fabrizi, L. (2023). A developmental shift in habituation to pain in human neonates. Current Biology, 33(8), 1397-1406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.071.
Pillai Riddell, R., Bucsea, O., Shiff, I., Chow, C., Gennis, H., Badovinac, S., DiLorenzo, M., Racine, N., Ahola Kohut, S., Lisi, D., Turcotte, K., Stevens, B., & Uman, L. (2023). Non-pharmacological management of infant and young child procedural pain. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 6. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006275.pub4.
Bucsea, O.*, Rupawala, M.*, Shiff, I., Wang, X., Meek J., Fitzgerald, M., Fabrizi L., Pillai Riddell, R.**, & Jones, L.** (2023). Clinical thresholds in pain-related facial activity linked to differences in cortical network activation in neonates. Pain, 164(5), 1039-1050. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002798.
*shared first authorship; **shared senior authorship.
Bucsea, O., Kosmerly, S., & Rogers, M.A. (2023). Effects of mothers’ parenting sense of competence and child gender on academic readiness in preschool children with symptoms of ADHD. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 39(1), 40-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/15377903.2021.2012862.
Gennis, H., Bucsea, O., Badovinac, S., Costa, S.C., McMurtry, M., Flora, D.B., & Pillai Riddell, R. (2022). Child distress expression and regulation behaviours: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Children, 9(2), 174. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9020174.
Di Lorenzo, M.G., Bucsea, O., Rumeo, C., Waxman, J.A., Flora, D.B., Schmidt, L.A., Pillai Riddell, R. (2022). Caregiver and Young Child Biological Attunement in Distress Contexts: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 132, 1010-1036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.10.045.
Shiff, I., Bucsea, O., Pillai Riddell, R. (2021). Psychosocial and Neurobiological Vulnerabilities of the Hospitalized Preterm Infant and Relevant Non-Pharmacological Pain Mitigation Strategies. Frontiers in Pediatrics, 9:568755. https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2021.568755
Bucsea, O. & Pillai Riddell, R. (2019). Non-pharmacological pain management in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: Managing neonatal pain without drugs. Seminars in Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 24(4), 101017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.siny.2019.05.009.
Thomassin, K., Bucsea, O., Chan, K.J., & Carter, E. (2019). A thematic analysis of parents’ gendered beliefs about emotion in middle childhood boys and girls. Journal of Family Issues, 40(18), 2944-2973. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X19868261.