Human Motor Control Section - Division of Intramural Research

 Mark   Hallett  M.D., Senior Investigator

Dr. Hallett obtained his A.B. and M.D. at Harvard University, had his internship in Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and his Neurology training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He had fellowships in neurophysiology at the NIH and in the Department of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry in London, where he worked with C. David Marsden. Before coming to NIH in 1984, Dr. Hallett was the Chief of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is currently Chief of the Medical Neurology Branch and Chief of its Human Motor Control Section. He is now Editor-in-Chief of World Neurology, the newsletter of the World Federation of Neurology and Associate Editor of Brain. He has been President of the Movement Disorder Society and Vice-President of the American Academy of Neurology. Among many awards, in 2005 he won the Movement Disorder Research Award of the American Academy of Neurology and in 2007 he won the Wilhelm-Erb-GedenkmÜnze of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fÜr Neurologie. His research activities focus on the physiology of human voluntary movement and its pathophysiology in disordered voluntary movement and involuntary movement.

Laboratory Staff

Muslimah Ali, B.A., Pre-doctoral IRTA ,  - -
Kemal  Bayulkem, M.D., Adjunct Investigator
Beth Belluscio, M.D., Clinical Fellow
David  Benninger, M.D., Special Volunteer
Brian  Berman, M.D., Clinical Fellow
Claudia Bonin, , Special Volunteer
Nancy  Bowen, Dr.PH, M.P.H, Clinical Research Project Manager
Mae Brooks, , Patient Care Coordinator
Elaine Considine, R.N., Nurse
Anthony  Crawley, , Special Volunteer
Nguyet  Dang, , Biomedical Engineer
Aviva  Ellenstein, M.D., Ph.D., Clinical Fellow
Celia  Gallea, Ph.D., Research Fellow
Kisha Greene, , Administrative Assistant
Dietrich  Haubenberger, M.D., Research Fellow
Priyantha  Herath, M.D., Clinical Fellow
Silvina  Horovitz, Ph.D., Staff Scientist
Elise  Houdayer, Ph.D., Research Fellow
Kazumi  Iseki, M.D., Special Volunteer
Seung-Hyun  Jin, Ph.D., Research Fellow
Anke  Karabanov, , Special Volunteer
Barbara Kimber, , Patient Care Coordinator ,  - -
Grisel  Lopez, M.D., Staff Clinician
Codrin  Lungu, M.D., Clinical Fellow
Enas  Shahine, M.D., Research Fellow
Ejaz Shamim, M.D., Special Volunteer
Camilo  Toro, M.D., Special Volunteer
Valerie Voon, M.D., Clinical Fellow
Sherry  Vorbach, , Laboratory Technician
Toshiaki  Wasaka, Ph.D., Special Volunteer
Kimberly Witherspoon, , Program Specialist ,  - -

Research Interests

The general mission of the Human Motor Control Section is to understand the physiology of normal human voluntary movement and the pathophysiology of different movement disorders. The members of the Section work together on the different projects, each bringing special expertise to the tasks. The main techniques employed are transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), electroencephalography (EEG), neuroimaging with positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and other techniques of clinical neurophysiology. The principal diseases studied are dystonia, Parkinson's disease, cerebellar ataxia, myoclonus, essential tremor, tic, psychogenic movement disorders and startle disorders.

Clinical Protocols

Physiology of weakness with movement disorders  06-N-0125

Phenotype/Genotype Correlations in Movement Disorders  01-N-0206

Treatment for Psychogenic Movement Disorders  06-N-0139

Long-Term Motor Learning in Focal Hand Dystonia  06-N-0161

Impaired motor learning and LTP/LTD-like plasticity in dystonia, are associated with abnormal modulation of cortical excitability by somatosensory volleys  05-N-0094

Placebo Controlled Study of the Therapeutic Effect of the Transcranial Electrical Polarization in Patients with Focal Hand Dystonia  05-N-0122

The role of cortical coherence in focal hand dystonia  05-N-0228

In Vivo Mapping of Structural and Biochemical Brain Abnormalities in Patients with Primary Focal Dystonia  02-N-0132

Transcranial Electrical Polarization for the Treatment of Bradykinesia and Rigidity in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.  03-N-0116

Brain Networks Responsible for Sense of Agency: An EEG study  06-N-0084

Testing Objective Measures of Motor Impairment in Early Parkinson’s disease  06-N-0096

EEG Study of Movement-Related Center-Surround Organization in Hand Dystonia  02-N-0010

Study of Tics in Patients with Tourette's Syndrome and Chronic Motor Tic Disorder with [15O]H2O PET in Awake and in Sleep States  02-N-0175

Blepharospasm and the experimental modulation of cortical excitability in primary and secondary motor areas. A pilot study.  06-N-0192

Brain Connectivity between visual input and motor output  06-N-0243

Brain Areas Involved in Temporal Linkage of Bilateral Movements  02-N-0069

Evaluation of Density and Pattern of Distribution of GABA A Receptors in Brain of Patients with Tourette's Syndrome Studied with PET using [11C] Flumazenil  02-N-0181

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Cortical Connectivity Involved in Tics and Voluntary Movements in Patients With Tourette's Syndrome and Chronic Motor Tic Disorder: An EEG Study  03-N-0126

Neurophysiological Studies in Patients With Psychogenic Movement Disorders  03-N-0134

Role of the Parieto-Frontal Network in Automatic Processing of Visually Presented Objects  04-N-0047

Sensorimotor Gating Studies in Restless Legs Syndrome  04-N-0059

fMRI Study on Mechanism of Rhythm Perception and Generation  04-N-0146

Evaluation of the plasticity of the primary motor cortex and motor learning in Parkinson’s disease  07-N-0020

The characteristics of sequence effect in de novo and advanced Parkinson’s disease  07-N-0088

Suppression and facilitation of the motor cortex by stimulation of the cerebellum in patients with dystonia and healthy controls  07-N-0165

Diagnosis and Natural History Protocol for Patients with Different Neurological Conditions  93-N-0202

Expanding the phenotype of the LRRK-2 mutation in individuals with history of Parkinson’s disease and their relatives: a prospective study  07-N-0137

Pilot Study of Tolerability of Lithium therapy in patients with spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1)  08-N-0134

Functional MRI Study of Brain Activation with Observation of Facial Expressions  05-N-0032

Brain Networks Responsible for Self-Agency: An fMRI study  06-N-0023

BOLD-fMRI of the Perception of Volition in Functional Movement Disorders  07-N-0117

The Role of Autoimmunity in Neurologic Complications of Celiac Disease  08-N-0153

Neurobiological studies in psychogenic movement disorders and non-epileptic seizures  07-N-0190

Real-time Analysis of Scalp Electroencephalography and Magnetoencephalography During Production of Human Voluntary Movement  02-N-0109

Brain connectivity and sensorimotor integration during dual/single motor tasks  07-N-0187

Role of the cortical medial frontal areas in blepharospasm  07-N-0191

The Association Between Focal Dystonia and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)  08-N-0040

Evaluation of Tourette's Syndrome with Multimetabolite H-Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy at 3T  02-N-0128

Dopaminergic Modulation of Cerebral Connectivity During Sequential Finger Movements: A Combined fMRI-PET Study  02-N-0216

The Effect of Peripheral Heterotopic Stimulation on Cortical Excitability in Dystonia  03-N-0048

Safety Study of the Super Rapid Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease  03-N-0220

Remote Effects of Stroke on Cerebral Metabolism. Evaluation with Positron Emission Tomography and Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy  03-N-0224

Timing of Voluntary Movement in Patients with Schizophrenia Using EEG and Surface EMG  04-N-0151

Timing of Voluntary Movement in Patients with Tourette Syndrome and Chronic Tic Disorder Using EEG and Surface EMG  04-N-0153

Neuropsychiatric correlates of psychogenic movement disorder and non-epileptic seizure  06-N-0027

Evaluation of Density and Pattern of Distribution of GABA A Receptors in the Brain of Patients with Focal Hand Dystonia Studied with PET using [11C] Flumazenil.  06-N-0031

Neurophysiology of Task-specificity of Focal Hand Dystonia  06-N-0126

fMRI studies of task specificity in Focal Hand Dystonia  06-N-0128

Hypersensitivity in Tourette Syndrome: an evaluation of perceived intensity versus threshold  06-N-0232

The Effect of Surround Inhibition during Phasic compared to Tonic Voluntary Finger Movement in Focal Hand Dystonia  06-N-0242

A Training Protocol for the use of Botulinum Toxin in the Treatment of Neurological Disorders  85-N-0195

Clinical Trial Characterizing the Bioavailability of 1-Octanol in Adults with Ethanol-responsive Essential Tremor   05-N-0092

Selected Recent Publications

Tamura Y, Matsuhashi M, Lin P, Ou B, Vorbach S, Kakigi R, Hallett M.
Impaired intracortical inhibition in the primary somatosensory cortex in focal hand dystonia. - Mov Disord.  15;23(4) 558-65 2008

Hallett M.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Primer - Neuron  Jul 19;55(2) 187-199 2007

Defazio G, Berardelli A, Hallett M.
Do primary adult-onset focal dystonias share aetiological factors? - Brain  May;130(Pt 5) 1183-93 2007

Hallett M.
Volitional control of movement: the physiology of free will. - Clin Neurophysiol  Jun;118(6) 1179-92 2007

Fridman EA, Immisch I, Hanakawa T, Bohlhalter S, Waldvogel D, Kansaku K,Wheaton L, Wu T, Hallett M
The role of the dorsal stream for gesture - Neuroimage  29 417-428 2006

Bohlhalter S, Goldfine A, Matteson S, Garraux G, Hanakawa T, Kansaku K, Wurzman R, Hallett M
Neural correlates of tic generation in Tourette syndrome: an event-related functional MRI study - Brain  Aug;129(Pt 8) 2029-37 2006

Selected Earlier Publications

Contact Information

Human Motor Control Section Medical Neurology Branch, NINDS  NIH, Building 10, Room 7D37  10 Center Drive, MSC 1428 Bethesda MD  20892-1428

Telephone: 301-496- 9526 (office), 301- 496-9526 (laboratory), 301-480- 2286 (fax), Email: hallettm@ninds.nih.gov