Sarah Lippé is a clinical neuropsychologist, a full professor of psychology at the University of Montreal, a Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS) senior scientist at Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal and the director of the multidisciplinary Neuroscience of Early Development Lab. She completed her Ph.D. in clinical and research neuropsychology at the University of Montreal. She later trained as a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at the Atomic Energy Commission (France) and at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care (Toronto).
Lippé’s research contributes to the ability to identify cognitive difficulties early during development and disentangles the mechanisms leading to learning challenges in order to target efficient interventions. Her work focuses on brain development, sensory processing and sensitivity, learning in neurotypically developing infants and children, and risk factors for neurodevelopmental conditions. She particularly wants to understand prenatal and genetic risk factors that contribute to neurodevelopmental conditions and their consequences on brain development, sensory processing and sensitivity and learning capacities. Her investigative methods are non-invasive and enable her to develop early screening methods and treatment efficacy assessments.
She is currently leading the first intergenerational genetic-neuropsychology- electroencephalogram (EEG) cohort of children with genetic risk factors for autism, in which more than 400 families are tested using EEG and neuropsychology. Moreover, ongoing contributions include the development of treatment options for neurodevelopmental conditions. Her lab is among the very first to propose EEG as an outcome measure in international and national clinical trials. Her team is driving the EEG investigation of the potential benefits of metformin for children with fragile X syndrome.
She also leads the Canadian neuropsychology and EEG component of Canadian and European clinical trials that are testing arbaclofen in children with autism. She is also involved in several national and international initiatives on infant EEG, aiming at creating a normative database to understand EEG signal maturation and to create a clinical tool for infants’ brain signal assessments. Her laboratory is multidisciplinary and includes students and highly qualified personnel at all levels of training.
Lippé is a member of several research groups and networks, including the Groupe de recherche sur l’inadaptation psychosociale chez l’enfant (GRIP), Transforming Autism Care Consortium (TACC) and Kids Brain Health Network (KBHN).
