The Motor Control Laboratory

Motor control is the study of how the brain controls movements. 

The aim is to understand how motor control varies across the lifespan of healthy participants and how movements are affected by disease or injury to the central and peripheral nervous system, as well as to explore ways we can improve motor control and functional movements with rehabilitation.

Understanding movement and functional ability

Movements underpin everyday functional activities such as walking, reaching and manipulating objects. Our research investigates how movements are affected in children and adults with neurological conditions such as neuropathy, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS) and hereditary conditions. Understanding how neurological conditions affect movement help us to develop and refine interventions that aim to improve movement and functional ability.

We explore movement in healthy participants and people with peripheral and central neurological conditions using techniques such as whole body recordings during constrained and unconstrained movements, and simultaneous recordings of the electrical signals produced by the brain and muscles during movements. By selectively stimulating sensory channels, we can understand how sensations (such as vision, vestibular and somatosensory) contribute to standing balance and the stabilisation of eye and head movements.

When we walk, we dynamically balance, accurately coordinating the body with how our legs step. As part of an NIHR-funded fellowship, Rachel Rapson, Doctoral Fellow and Physiotherapist at the Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, is investigating how dynamic balance while stepping is affected in children with cerebral palsy and spastic diplegia or hemiplegia, and its impact on symptoms such as weakness and spasticity. A feasibility study of a novel walking and balance trainer will begin in 2020.