Members

My research area of interest is in the field of neurorehabilitation technologies for supporting people with neurological conditions or injuries to learn, re-learn, and recover motor functions, with special focus on gait, postural control, and upper-limb function.

Focus areas: functional electrical stimulation systems and rehabilitation robots to support gait rehabilitation and grasping of tetraplegic and hemiparetic patients, assistive technologies, assessment technologies, gaming technologies, and their combinations. Also, mechanisms that result on sensory-motor impairments and recovery after injury, including central pattern generators and neural plasticity.

I have conducted research on pain and its management for over 30 years. Areas of interest include response to electrophysical agents, individuality and pain, perceptual embodiment, epidemiology, pain education, pain and art, community-support-programmes for pain, and painogencity (health promotion). Methodologies include evidence syntheses (e.g., Cochrane reviews, meta-ethnography), human response to stimuli (quantitative sensory testing) and clinical trials. I have a long-standing interest in transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) and deliver a distance learning MSc module on Foundation Neuromodulation (implantable devices).

My main interest is in understanding how our body representation changes in the brain (brain plasticity). Our primary model for brain plasticity is hand function and dysfunction, and how we could use technology to increase hand functionality in able and disabled individuals at all ages.