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Emmanuelle Wilhelm's PhD defence: "Investigating corticospinal dynamics underlying movement preparation: lessons from and for Parkinson's disease". June 2023

Congratulations to Emmanuelle for successfully defending her doctoral thesis on 13th June. Her research explored the neurophysiological abnormalities in the primary motor cortex (M1) that contribute to bradykinesia in Parkinson's disease (PD). Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), Emmanuelle found a consistent deficit in preparatory suppression, a mechanism involved in voluntary movement preparation, in PD patients compared to healthy subjects. This deficit was independent of treatments but correlated with disease duration and motor symptom severity. Emmanuelle is now a postdoctoral research fellow at HM CINAC in Madrid, where she will continue investigating cortical excitability in PD patients using TMS and exploring non-invasive techniques like transcranial static magnetic field stimulation.