Our focus is on the development of neuromodulation therapies of brain (DBS) and spinal-cord (SCS) to alleviate impairments of gait and balance in patients with Parkinson's disease. We combine a comprehensive set of neurotechnologies for monitoring and interacting with whole-body kinematics, kinetics, and forces, in parallel to cortical and subcortical brain signals, as a way to link brain and motor states during a wide range of locomotor activities of daily living.

Our goal is to design and push forward therapies that can intelligently interact with ongoing pathological neural dynamics : Robust, clinically-relevant treatments must ecologically exploit (rather than over-write) the capabilities of the underlying neural circuits. They are thus critically contingent on a mechanistic understanding of the neural processes that underlie motor function and dysfunction.

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We developed the first activity-dependent deep brain stimulation therapy for Parkinson’s disease that continuously adapts stimulation to the patient’s ongoing mobility demands across physiological fluctuations. By decoding locomotor behaviors in real time from neural signals recorded within the brain, the system automatically selects stimulation parameters optimized for walking, standing, and other activities of daily living. In a clinical feasibility study, this adaptive approach improved gait and mobility while preserving control of cardinal motor symptoms, providing a foundation for a new generation of personalized neuromodulation therapies.