At NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation, Sonya Kim, PhD, CRC, BCB, is considered a pioneer of heart rate variability in traumatic brain injury.

Dr. Kim’s research interests include cognitive deficits in multiple sclerosis (MS), chronic traumatic brain injury, and mechanisms and interventions that help rehabilitate functioning after sustaining a brain injury.

Board-certified in biofeedback, Dr. Kim is using heart rate variability biofeedback to improve emotional regulation for people with severe and chronic brain injuries. This work integrates psychophysiology biofeedback into behavioral training techniques to improve the lives of individuals with significant, long-term brain injury. By using physical memory to enhance self-regulation, this training technique teaches people with serious learning and memory problems to gain control over emotional dysregulation.

Dr. Kim is also investigating the effects external factors on patient self-regulation. Specifically, Dr. Kim is interested in the family response to a patient’s condition and how that response impacts quality of life for both patient and caregiver. Dr. Kim developed an instrument to quantify post-traumatic growth in caregiving partners of people with MS and is in the process of validating this instrument for other populations, including acquired brain injuries. Dr. Kim recently received a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) under the Switzer Research Fellowship to support this work.

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