Overview

The movement neurophysiology laboratory uses a variety of modalities to study body movement control in health and disease. These modalities include movement sensors, electroencephalography, electromyography, evoked potentials, responses to stimulation, and audio recording. These techniques are applied to Parkinson’s disease, myoclonus, tremor, dystonia, and other movement disorders. The involvement of cortical mechanisms in abnormal movement is a major focus of the laboratory. We also study electrophysiology measures of general cognitive ability and specific cognitive tasks, such as speech and speech perception. Our measures can be tracked over time and study the deterioration of cognition to dementia. The measurements that we make may be correlated with a wide variety of phenomena. In particular, we correlate our data with neuropathology as well as behavior measures. Besides limb movement, we study speech and speech perception electrophysiology. Movement abnormalities whose natures are not yet known, such as the “yips” phenomenon in golf, are also studied by our laboratory.

Our laboratory consists of personnel trained to do these measurements and the equipment and supplies that record the neurophysiology measures. The data are recorded digitally and stored for offline analysis. In addition to visual inspection, we can perform averaging, frequency analysis, and brain mapping depending on the project. When needed, the data may be recorded outside the laboratory and then brought back to the laboratory for analysis.