My long term research interests involve the development of a comprehensive understanding of movement disorders and novel approaches to monitoring, diagnosis and treating patients with movement disorders. My academic training and research experience have provided me with an excellent background in neurology and neuroscience with a strong emphasis on movement disorders and motor control, two interlinking disciplines.
As an undergraduate, I was able to conduct research with Professor Rubinsztein on the phenomenon of anticipation in Huntington’s disease. As a neurology resident with Professor Inzelberg and Professor Tanne, my research focused on the epidemiology of dementia and stroke. With Professor Hochermann and Professor Inzelberg I researched the effects of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (DBS) on motor control in PD and gained experience both with DBS and motor control. As a pre-doctorate student after completing my neurology residency I led two research projects. Firstly comparing gait kinematic patterns between ataxia, Parkinson’s disease and healthy controls (we showed preservation of a certain kinematic law among all groups but different gait kinematic patterns between the two clinical groups). This work has been published and I am first author. The second project was a motor task based functional MRI study on the representation of the body in the motor system. This work has not been published yet.
During the last 3.5 years I have been working as a neurology specialist in the Movement Disorders Institute and the Department of Neurology, Sheba Medical Center with a specific interest in (1) invasive treatments for advanced Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders and (2) the development of tools to quantify tremor and other movement disorders. I continue to research the motor control aspects of movement disorders bridging the gap between the academic and the clinical fields that I am experienced in with the aim of advancing both our basic understanding of human motor control and movement disorders and in exploiting technological tools that provide objective quantitative measurements of motor dysfunction to test hypotheses for example on the role of cerebellar function in movement disorders and its importance in optimizing and predicting response to pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies. Currently routine neurological clinical practice involves a large extent of trial and error with little information available to counsel patients and families on predicted success of various therapeutic approaches and little objective feedback for the clinician on the patient on the efficacy or lack thereof of therapeutic interventions. My collaboration together with Dr. Jason Friedman’s lab in particular through this grant will help build a solid foundation to achieve these important aims with the focus initially being on Essential Tremor.
At the Movement Disorders Institute, there is a high throughput of patients and a strong culture of recruiting patients for research with high compliance and motivation among staff and patients. Since we are a tertiary center and offer advanced treatment including focused ultrasound we attract a large number of patients with tremor. I have the role of being the lead neurologist in the focused ultrasound team. I therefore am in a very good position in terms of my training and experience, for leading research projects and contributing to the peer review process.

Reviewer Keywords