Research

The Hammer Neuromodulation Laboratory's research centers on using in-human recordings to understand network-level neurophysiologic dysfunction in movement disorders. Our goal is to use this understanding to improve neuromodulation methods such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) and develop novel neuromodulation therapies. We use both noninvasive and invasive techniques to record neural electrical signals from the brain to study movement disorders including Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, cerebellar ataxia, and dystonia. Our research focuses on both basal ganglia and cerebellar networks. 

Areas of Interest:

Neurophysiologic Signatures of Essential Tremor in DBS

Essential tremor is the most common movement disorder in adults, and deep brain stimulation is a treatment option when medications are insufficient. Despite the prevalence of essential tremor, it's underlying pathophysiology and how DBS treats it remains poorly understood. Our project aims to better understand how pathologic oscillatory activity in cerebello-thalamo-cortical networks may correspond to essential tremor symptoms and how DBS affects this.

Adaptive DBS for Parkinson's Disease

Standard-of-care DBS applies stimulation pulses with a constant amplitude, despite patients' symptoms often fluctuating throughout the day with their medication cycle. We recently demonstrated that adaptive DBS, which adjusts stimulation intensity in response to a neural signal biomarker of symptoms, can improve residual motor fluctuation symptoms in the home environment. Our next steps will now focus on identifying how to optimally use neural signals as feedback signals in adaptive DBS systems and developing ways to streamline configuration of adaptive DBS systems to help facilitate clinical translation.

Neurophysiologic Signatures of Ataxia

Cerebellar ataxia can result in disabling impaired motor coordination, and has very few treatment options. Our research focuses on identifying abnormal neural signals within cerebello-cortical networks that correlate with ataxia symptoms, aiming to inform the development of neuromodulation therapies for ataxia.